


something cracked down the middle

by rookerrogue



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23458177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rookerrogue/pseuds/rookerrogue
Summary: Hot Rod's been captured by Turmoil and his crew.Deadlock would rather do anything else than be his guard.Let's find out what happens together!
Relationships: Drift | Deadlock/Hot Rod
Comments: 136
Kudos: 173





	1. Chapter 1

"Designation Deadlock.” Deadlock paused at the intercom, his hand tapping over the mic absentmindedly as he considered, as he did every time he returned from a mission, attempting a refuel and escape. “Mission code  _ Praxium _ , ship password 65239. Permission to come aboard?”

A long sigh came across the intercom. “Acknowledged, Deadlock.”

Deadlock cocked his head. “Borer?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“What happened to Solenia?” The former intercom officer hadn’t been assigned a new post in  _ ages.  _ For Turmoil to have shifted her while Deadlock was gone was unusual enough to question.

“She had to go fill Stiltus’ post. Look, can you just dock? You’re taking up air time.”

“You can’t take up-- okay.” Deadlock sighed, sitting back in his seat as the intercom cut off. Something was up. No dancing around that one. The only thing Deadlock didn’t know was if the something would be trouble for  _ him _ once he boarded, and that was the only thing he really cared about. 

It would be a few weeks at the very least before Turmoil would even consider letting Deadlock out on another mission, so if his life on the ship in the meantime was going to be hell, he’d like to know about it in advance. He’d already been prepared for Turmoil to be angry that Deadlock had been much longer on his mission than agreed on, but if there was something else happening on the ship on top of that, well. . . Deadlock just wouldn’t like to have  _ another _ violent altercation with Turmoil, that’s all.

After all, it was transparent that Megatron no longer cared enough about Deadlock’s well-being to intervene if Turmoil decided to try and kill him. Three million years as a central part of Decepticon inner circles and all for what? For Megatron to assign him a meaningless post serving underneath an incompetent commander?

To this day, Deadlock was unsure whether or not it had been meant as a punishment of some kind or if Megatron had just stopped caring what happened to Deadlock after a point. 

Neither option was particularly appealing to him, so he didn’t think about it.

“Docking,” he said over the intercom, and rolled his eyes as Borer made a single grunt of acknowledgement in response. Solenia would never have been this sloppy. 

He pulled his ship into the hangar, turned to snatch his guns from their places on the second chair, and headed out. His ship was nearly dry of fuel, and its engines heaved and whistled with too much heat; the mechanibots on the ship would fix it up and have it ready to go for the next time Deadlock was allowed out into the stars. 

Whenever that was.

“So, you feel like telling me what’s going on yet?” he asked Borer, through the comm line in his wrist. He heard another long-suffering sigh.

“Look, Deadlock, Gauge is coming to fill you in. Meet them at the northside hangar door. Do  _ not  _ go out through the southside door.”

Well, when Borer put it like that, there was nothing Deadlock could do  _ but  _ investigate the southside passageway.

That had sounded suspiciously like an order from Turmoil, and anything Turmoil didn’t want Deadlock discovering was of immediate interest to him. After all, what if his commander was briefing his crewmates on how best to disarm Deadlock when Turmoil finally snapped and decided to execute him? Deadlock needed to know that kind of thing.

He poked his head through the southside hangar door quickly, and looked around; the hall was empty, the doors along the walls hanging open. Deadlock knew this path; a few habsuites in, and there was the medibay, and at the end of this particular hallway lay a large open space that Turmoil had begun using as the pre-battle conference room. It was big enough to house the entire ship’s crew, and with a slightly raised stage that Deadlock knew Turmoil just  _ loved.  _ At the moment, it was the only room that had any sort of noise coming from it.

Which was odd.

At this time of the day, there was no reason for the crew not to be in their habsuites, or at their stations. 

So why. . .?

He crept along the hallway, cognizant of the fact that Gauge could arrive at any time to find him gone, and attempted to interpret the faint noises coming from the meeting hall. It sounded too rhythmic for any sort of cheering and too solitary for it to be a group of mecha making it. But why would only one mech be shouting in there? It wasn’t Turmoil’s voice, it was pitched differently.

_ What’s going on that Turmoil doesn’t want me to see? _

“Deadlock,” came an aggravated voice through his comm. “Where are you?”

“Gauge,” Deadlock greeted, trying to put a sort of charm into his reply. “Hi. Coming back right now.”

“You went out through the southside?!”

“Uh huh.” Deadlock transformed and made his way back through the hallway, leaping into root mode as he reached the hangar bay again. “What can I say? I love a secret.”

“By the shadow of the Underbase.” Gauge sounded unusually ground off. Deadlock was intrigued. “What if Turmoil had seen you? You  _ know  _ how much scrap Borer and I would have been in? We were supposed to fill you in before you--” They came into view and switched their comm off. “You’re selfish, you pit-damned bastard. You may have a few chances stored up in your backlog but we  _ don’t.  _ You think  _ I  _ know how to shoot my way out of being a blight on the Cause?”

Deadlock waved them off. “What is he doing that he doesn’t want me to see?”

“It’s not that he doesn’t want you to see-- he doesn’t mind, he’d be happy to show off to more people-- but he wants you to understand what’s going on before we take you in.” Gauge started walking, their arms crossed. “Guess he doesn’t want to talk to you any more than you want to talk to him. And with Hot Rod. . .”

“Who?”

“Ah, it’s  _ so  _ great you’re back,” Gauge said sarcastically, throwing their hands in the air. “Do you know, it was actually close to peaceful here when you weren’t picking fights with Turmoil every day? Now he has  _ two  _ reasons to be angry.”

“Explain,” Deadlock gritted out.

“Look, when you were gone we tried to do a quick takeover of what we  _ thought  _ was an unmanned Autobot base.” Gauge tapped a button on their wrist and a map flew up, designating the area that the base had been. “Turmoil sent a few mecha down there to check the place over and put Decepticon codes into the computers, but they never came back. When the second squad went down, the place blew up with them inside.”

Deadlock’s eyes widened.

“Yeah. Turns out there  _ was _ an Autobot there. Killed off fifteen good mecha before we captured him.” Gauge smacked their wrist and the screen disappeared. “Turmoil wanted to keep him. He was impressed.”

“What the  _ fuck,”  _ Deadlock said, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you  _ kill  _ him?”

“Not my decision, Deadlock! I tell you, if it were up to me, he’d be dead a long time ago, but. . . Turmoil must have gotten bored without you here to kick around so he fitted the Autobot up with a mouth flower and a ranged shock collar and he’s been here ever since.”

“And? What else is there?”

Gauge sighed.

“Gauge, what else is there?”

“He tried to escape today,” Gauge said. “Stiltus was his guard and he killed him trying to get away. That’s why Solenia took his post.”

“So he’s dead, right?” Deadlock tried to meet Gauge’s eyes. “The Autobot? Turmoil killed him for that, right?”

“No,” Gauge snapped. “He’s in the meeting room being tortured within an inch of his spark, but no, he’s not dead, and it wasn’t my  _ fucking  _ decision so you can back the fuck off, okay?”

Deadlock shook his head in disbelief. “He brings an  _ Autobot  _ on board the ship. . .”

“Feel like taking it up with him? Great! Go talk to him now. He’s mad as hell that you were gone as long as you were, by the way. Try not to get killed. Or actually, do. I couldn’t care less.” Gauge turned and walked away.

Deadlock stood there, trying to take it all in.

The conclusion that he reached was that Turmoil was an  _ idiot. _

__ “Autobot bases are never unmanned,” he muttered furiously, making his way toward the meeting hall. “Fucking idiot. You don’t bring the enemy onboard your  _ ship.  _ If he was capable enough to take down fifteen mecha at the base why would you give him  _ one  _ guard? Why would you let him go free in the first place?  _ Primus!” _ Another mech in the hall gave him a wide berth as he passed. “If he killed his guard why the  _ fuck  _ is he still here?”

He paused at the doorway to the meeting hall. Mecha were milling about; the noises he’d heard from before were gone now, which meant that whatever show Turmoil had been putting on of the Autobot’s torture was over. Was Turmoil still in there?

Deadlock rocked back on his heels. He hated the humiliation of having to request permission to enter rooms, to dock ships, to fucking  _ fuel.  _ He’d been a commander once. Why had Megatron assigned him to Turmoil? What had Deadlock  _ done? _

__ “Designation Deadlock,” he growled into the camera. “Permission to enter?”

“Granted,” Turmoil’s voice boomed from inside. The door slid open.

Deadlock rolled his eyes again as he stepped through the doorway.  _ Here we go. _

__ “So you finally decided to show back up,” Turmoil said accusingly. 

Deadlock scoffed, looking down and to the side, his hands resting on his hips (tellingly, he hoped, near his guns). “If the mission took a little bit longer than expected that’s not  _ my  _ fault.”

“Look at me,” Turmoil demanded. “It was a three-week mission, Deadlock, and it took you  _ two months.” _

__ “Like I said, a little longer than expected,” Deadlock said harshly, still not looking up.

“Look. At. Me.”

Deadlock jerked his head up, finally seeing what he’d been expecting to since entering the room-- a mech, red-gold and on the smaller side, crumpled on the ground with his hands in cuffs. His frame smoked. Deadlock narrowed his eyes-- yeah, those were definitely whip marks all over, which was  _ stupid  _ because Deadlock  _ knew  _ they didn’t have an electro-whip on board. That meant Turmoil must have specifically requested their resident scientist to make one for the sole purpose of pointlessly torturing this random Autobot. Fucking  _ idiot. _

__ “Took so long you apparently had time to get yourself a pet,” he spat. “What’s up with that, huh? Is that up to code?”

“You’d know about  _ code,”  _ Turmoil sneered. “No, Hot Rod here is a  _ guest.” _

__ “Why the  _ fuck  _ didn’t you kill him?” Deadlock demanded. “You know how much of a security risk he is?”

“Oh, we figured that out.” Turmoil glared down at the Autobot. “Turns out, just enough of a security risk to kill Stiltus. I don’t think he’ll try that again, though.”

“He definitely wouldn’t try that again if you would fucking  _ kill  _ him. Like you’re supposed to.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Turmoil mused.

Deadlock blinked. “No, I just know how to run a ship, Turmoil. And I’m pretty sure one of the first things you want to do as a commander is  _ not  _ let an Autobot go running around in your hallways.” He shook his head. “Why did you even keep him in the first place? Information?”

Turmoil cocked his head. “For fun.”

Deadlock stared at him.

“I have interests,” Turmoil said, and poked Hot Rod’s body slightly with the toe of his foot. “Sometimes I let Manibus experiment on him. We’re working on some code that will let us remotely control a mech’s movements to an extent.” He shrugged. “And other times. . . I have my fun with him. He’s surprisingly resilient.”

“Sick bastard,” Deadlock muttered. 

“What was that?” Turmoil took a step toward him. “Are you questioning my leadership  _ again,  _ Deadlock?” His cannon arm swung out from his side, not armed, not yet, but ready. “So soon after what happened the last time? Be careful. I’m still excited from teaching Hot Rod his lesson. I’d have no problem teaching you another one.”

Deadlock hissed, stepping back and reaching for his gun slightly. 

Turmoil stopped, and turned back to Hot Rod. “But I have a better idea. You’re so worried about him being a security risk-- you get to be his new guard.” 

_ “What?”  _ Deadlock snarled.

“If you kill him, I’ll kill you.” Turmoil said the words harshly, as if he were trying to force them through Deadlock’s processor. “You do not go anywhere without him. Don’t let him transform, he’s got a mouth flower. Oh, and you bring him to Manibus when he asks.” Turmoil reached down and dragged Hot Rod up with one arm, throwing him across the room at Deadlock. Deadlock flinched as the mech landed roughly at his feet. “For now, though, you might want to take him to the medics. I think I might have broken something.”

Deadlock seethed. “You--”

“Get out,” Turmoil ordered.

“But you can’t--”

“Take him and  _ get out.” _


	2. Chapter 2

Hot Rod had to get out of here.

Sure, it was invaluable information he was gathering, captive onboard a Decepticon ship, but he’d like to survive to actually  _ disperse  _ that information. If at all possible.

And wouldn’t Prime and the others be proud of him, be  _ happy  _ to see him, once he’d escaped? Hot Rod imagined Prime looking down at him and telling him that he’d done a good job. The image didn’t necessarily do anything for him, so he readjusted and put Kup there instead, a hand on Hot Rod’s shoulder, saying, “I knew you had it in ya, kid.” 

_ That _ one bolstered him. He grinned, filled with renewed courage.

It was absolutely imperative that he escape this ship. Not only did he live in constant fear of that-- that  _ mountain  _ of a mech with the cannon on his arm, Turmoil or whatever his name was-- the creepy scientist onboard was getting all too familiar with his code. Next thing you knew, he’d be popping Hot Rod’s panels and perusing data like he’d been invited in. It really wasn’t that great of a life. 

0/10, would not recommend. 

But hey, at least he wasn’t lonely. The Decepticons onboard were evil, of course, from virtue of being Decepticons, but at least they were mecha. Mecha who would talk to him and exchange quick conversations (because Hot Rod knew that it was hard to keep being mean and keep ignoring someone who was positive and happy and talked to you every day, and he was mercilessly exploiting that). 

Primus, it was obvious how much he’d missed conversations.

But he didn’t need to think about that right now.

What he needed to think about was escape, which was something that needed to happen  _ soon _ \-- all the civil conversations with Decepticons in the world couldn’t erase the fact that Hot Rod was being tortured at  _ least  _ weekly. And it really wasn’t that much fun. It was terrible, actually. He was lucky that the ship’s medic was forged, because he needed  _ skill  _ to fix what was being done to him. Last time, Turmoil had slammed him down into the floor, over and over, until his arm had almost broken off. His self-repair was still aching over that one.

But he was-- he was strong and tough and didn’t let it break his spirit, even though he could have. He’d been through worse, he told himself over and over. Mentally and physically, he’d been through worse. He could and  _ would  _ survive this.

And he’d escape.

The only thing he had to do was get rid of a couple elements stopping that.

Namely, his bodyguard and his shock collar.

The shock collar, he felt, was easy; all Hot Rod would have to do is somehow get its twin points away from his neck and make the electric shocks less potent to his mobile systems. He’d been trying to get Turmoil to hit him in the neck for weeks now, and a lucky shot had finally managed it; one of Turmoil’s fists had dented the collar just enough that Hot Rod’s fingers could slip underneath it and cover the metal points where the electricity would come out. The medic hadn’t noticed it; another stroke of luck. Hot Rod could only hope, now, that when he got out of the range of the collar’s epicenter the electricity would go through his fingers and hand, not his neck. It would hurt like the pit, yeah, but he’d much prefer  _ hurt  _ over  _ passed out, ready for Turmoil to take back.  _

He could do that. He  _ would. _

His guard, on the other hand. . .

“Hey, Stiltus,” he said, running to catch up with the other mech-- a jetframe, hardly taller than he was. The mech jumped as he approached, his hands tightening around his gun. “Can we go fuel? I’m a little tired but I don’t want to make you recharge yet.” 

He smiled brightly at the Decepticon, his hands open and by his sides to put him at ease. There. He’d shown that he cared about what Stiltus wanted-- Stiltus didn’t like it when he had to recharge because it made him nervous to be sleeping in the same area as Hot Rod-- and he’d made a reasonable request. 

“You need to go to Manibus.”

_ “Please,  _ I haven’t fueled since I got out of the medibay a few days ago.” Hot Rod put his hands together winningly. “We can go fuel and stop by Manibus on the way back?”

Stiltus rolled his neck, stared up at the ceiling, and groaned.

“Stiltus, if I pass out on the floor on the way to Manibus’ what will Turmoil think of your bodyguarding skills?” Hot Rod stared at him earnestly. “Just a quick stop?”

_ “Fine,”  _ Stiltus grumbled. “Primus. Is Turmoil going to make you a playpen next? Let’s go.” He turned a corner abruptly, heading west toward the fueling area. 

They walked in silence for a moment. Hot Rod hated silence, even when it was with Stiltus, who he really could go forever without ever hearing talk again.

“Over that way is the Bridge?” Hot Rod asked. 

“Down that hallway, yeah.”

“And down that hallway?”

Stiltus looked. “More habsuites.”

“What about there?”

“Gun bank. Don’t even think about asking to go see, I’m not that dumb.”

“I wouldn’t.” Hot Rod tried to look hurt even though Stiltus refused to look at him. “What about over there?” He pointed at a recessed area up ahead in the hallway they were walking down. 

“Escape pod bay.”

Quickly, Hot Rod asked another question to smooth over any suspicions Stiltus might have had. “So how many crew are there, if there’s so many habsuites?”

“About seventy.” Stiltus turned to glare at him. “Less, now, because of  _ you.” _

Hot Rod shrugged. “Wouldn’t you try just as hard to protect a responsibility you’d been given?”

_ “No?”  _

“Fine, what about to stay alive? For all I knew, you Decepticons were gonna kill me.”

“Wish we had,” Stiltus muttered.

“Rude.” Hot Rod smiled. “I’ve been a delightful guest.”

“Listen, you little glitch, the only time I enjoy your presence here is when I get to overhear Turmoil beating the spark out of you. Fuck off. Let’s get your fuel and then I’m taking you to Manibus.” Stiltus whirled back around, and continued down the hall.

Hot Rod followed the Con, his hands clenching and unclenching. He had the beginnings of a plan and a little hope, and to be honest, that was good enough for him. 

Looks like his escape attempt was going to be sooner than later.

They fueled, tensely, sitting together at a table; or rather, Stiltus sat at one end of the table and stared off into the distance, his hands fiddling on the trigger of his gun, while Hot Rod sipped his energon and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. Which, y’know, was kinda hard when someone’s paint job was as pretty as his. Hot Rod made a valiant effort of it, though, which was what counted.

“Are you done yet?” Stiltus asked, and that was  _ definitely  _ a jitter. Hot Rod put the glass down slowly. 

“Sure,” he said. “But if I faint on the exam table, you’re carrying me back.”

“Shut the fuck up, I am  _ not _ . Your aft is staying at Manibus’ until I decide I want to come pick you back up.”

Hot Rod glared at him from across the table. Luckily, Stiltus didn’t know him and didn’t realize that he had crossed the line from “Decepticon” to “person Hot Rod, specifically, did not like at all.” 

“Let’s go, then,” he said, and stood, shoving his drink across the table.

_ “Thank  _ you,” Stiltus said, and grabbed his gun as he followed Hot Rod. “Hey, Manibus’ is over that way. Hot Rod! It’ll be faster if we go down that way--”

Hot Rod ignored him, setting off into the hallway that they’d come from.

“Fine,” Stiltus muttered, following him. “Stupid Autobot.”

“Are you  _ coming?”  _ Hot Rod called.

Stiltus ran to catch up with him and grabbed his arm roughly. Hot Rod was horrified to hear a whimper of pain escape his traitorous vocalizer-- it was the same arm Turmoil had almost broken off, he realized. He jerked away from Stiltus. 

“You walk behind me,” Stiltus ordered. 

“What, are you worried I’ll run away and you won’t be able to catch me?”

“You walk behind me,” Stiltus repeated, through gritted teeth, and continued down the passageway. They were nearing the recessed area with the escape pods.

Hot Rod stared at his bodyguard’s back, getting a faceful of wings. Lovely.

“Not gonna miss you, Stiltus,” Hot Rod said under his breath.

Then he bent over, put his hands to his collar, and screamed.

He had to admit, it was a rudimentary plan; it counted almost entirely on the idea that Stiltus was too stupid to see that he was pretending to be shocked by his collar. But Hot Rod could say with almost complete confidence, after spending these interminable weeks in the near-constant company of the mech, that he really  _ was  _ that stupid. At least, in a tense situation. 

Stiltus whirled.

Hot Rod fell to his knees, pulling at his collar and spasming jerkily as if he really was being tortured with massive amounts of electricity. “My collar-- my collar is mal-mal-malfunctioning--”

“What are you tallking about?” Stiltus said, worriedly, stepping toward him. “You’re not out of the epicenter’s range, what-- what--”

“Help me!” Hot Rod screamed.

“Are you--” Stiltus hesitated. Hot Rod could see him weighing the possibilties in his mind. If the collar really was malfunctioning, Hot Rod could die. If Hot Rod died, Turmoil would be very unhappy, with Stiltus specifically.

Hot Rod let himself fall, hitting the floor hard. For extra effect, he dimmed the light in his optics to  _ really  _ dial up the sense of urgency.

And then Stiltus did the one thing Hot Rod had been hoping he would do.

“Okay, get out of the hallway, hang on, let me see,” he panted. He pulled Hot Rod up into a standing position, held him around his chest, and helped him into the recessed escape pod bay. Couldn’t let any other crew see Hot Rod almost dying, of course, lest they go running to Turmoil. “Get your hands out of there. Move your hands!”

Hot Rod, fighting off Stiltus, eyed the escape pod screens at the same time. 

There was no way he was getting in one of those without Stiltus being out of the picture. Out of the picture, out of this world, out of Hot Rod’s business. You flare, you flicker, you fade. All the good stuff. 

His bodyguard had to go.

The buttons were fairly straightforward. Good. Hot Rod pitched himself forward, making sure to double up on himself in pain so the movement looked natural, and smacked face-first into the control panel for the nearest pod. His helm hit the button to open the doors, and they hissed apart with an intimidating amount of force.

Stiltus, stupidly, didn’t notice. The fact that Hot Rod hadn’t stopped screaming might have had something to do with how distracted he was. 

“Hot Rod!” he was shouting now. “Let me get your collar off! Hot Rod!”

. . . Oh, now that was a  _ tempting  _ offer. But Hot Rod knew that if he had to choose between killing Stiltus and getting his collar off, he’d have to pick the first option in order to escape. He continued with his plan.

“I can’t, I can’t--” he choked out, and let himself fall to his knees in front of Stiltus’ pedes, his hands still wrapped around his collar and shrieking like the pit. He felt Stiltus bend over him, felt his hands wrap around the back of his collar, and begin to pull.

Hot Rod gritted his teeth, lunged forward, and grabbed Stiltus’ legs. 

“Wh--” Stiltus said, but by then Hot Rod was moving, throwing Stiltus over his back and pitching him into the open door of the escape pod. He whirled, hit the button to close with his elbow, and leapt back as the doors slammed shut and crushed Stiltus’ head mercilessly between them.

His legs twitched for a moment, and then he was gone.

Hot Rod stood there, staring at the way the blood leaked pink around the door and the shards of brain module clung to the metal and felt that he should say something witty or noble or memorable, like Springer or Optimus would do if they were in this situation. But he could think of nothing. 

“Sorry, Stiltus,” he said instead. 

Now he had to hurry.

He ran around to each of the other escape pods, pressing the releases and sending them jettisoning out into space. The pod with half of Stiltus’ head inside went too, and the mech’s body fell away from the door as it flew out. Hot Rod climbed inside the last pod, huddled into the corner with the remote release, and felt himself leave the ship.

He wasn’t so dumb as to think that he could get anywhere in the pod, at least not before Turmoil realized he was gone and picked him back up. But he hoped-- he really, really hoped-- that he would be able to float far enough away that the signal blocker that had been in place on the ship wouldn’t be able to stifle his radio anymore. He could call for help.

He stared out of his window at Turmoil’s ship.

And then his collar beeped.

_ Oh, slag. _

Hot Rod desperately shoved his fingers up into the space he’d made, and just in time; the collar beeped once more and electricity began pouring out of the twin metal points, shocking his hand and running down his wrist. Hot Rod gasped in pain, clenched his other hand, and bore it. He had to stand it until he could radio for help.

“C-c-come on-n-n,” he grunted, trying to make a connection.

The electricity began to feel unbearable, volts upon volts turning his arm into what felt like a melted mess of circuitry and his fingers into unfeeling lumps of metal. Hot Rod whimpered and couldn’t help letting out a miserable cry, willing the comm to pick up and the torture to end.

He floated steadily away from the ship.

“Pl-please, p-pick up-p,” he begged. His radio still blinked  _ empty signal.  _ Just a little further from the ship. He just had to hang on a little longer.

With another beep from his collar, the stream of electricity doubled in strength. Hot Rod screamed now, really screamed, and felt his hand begin to lose its strength to remain where he’d placed it; with all his will, he forced his remaining hand to take its place. The dead arm fell to his side, smoking and useless, until self-repair set in.

_ “Pick-k- up-p-p!”  _ he managed.

His radio blinked once, twice, and finally came online, free from the damper Turmoil had onboard his ship. Hot Rod could have wept with the relief. Fighting through the pain, he accessed it, found Blaster’s contact, and sent out a comm.

The Autobot radiomaster answered. In Hot Rod’s mind, so did Primus.

“Hey there, this is Blaster,” came the smooth and friendly voice Hot Rod hadn’t heard in years. “What can I do for you, my friend?”

“Hot Rod, this is Hot Rod,” Hot Rod gasped, his other hand beginning to reach the same numbness of the first; he was unsure how long he could keep the electricity from his neck. “I need help, I need to be picked up, Blaster, please--”

“Hot Rod?”

“Yes!” Hot Rod sobbed; the pain was becoming too much, too much, he couldn’t hold on, he  _ had to hold on.  _ “Please come get me!”

There was a pause. “Hot Rod, I’m sorry, but you know what the boss bot said. I don’t know how you got on this channel from over there, but don’t access here again. Sorry.”

“Wait,” Hot Rod said, realizing, his tanks dropping, “no, no, it’s not what you think, I’m not--”

“See you on the flip side, Hot Rod. Blaster out.”

The line went dead.

_ “No!”  _ Hot Rod screamed, and then his hand slipped free of the collar, dead as the first one, and the electricity went straight to his mobile system. He went stiff, his entire frame seizing with the agony, and fell to the floor of the pod.

It was nothing like he’d pretended for Stiltus’ benefit. It was nothing like he could have anticipated. Hot Rod was only vaguely aware that his pod was being slowly pulled back in toward the ship before his systems gave out and he was left, blessedly, with nothing.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rip stiltus forever in our hearts :pensive:
> 
> comments always appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

Deadlock made it almost all the way out of the meeting room before it became obvious that the Autobot wasn’t going to stand up, which made the “arm thrown around the shoulder” bit he was trying to do pretty much useless. 

Turmoil was still fucking  _ watching  _ him.

Deadlock threw a glare over his shoulder, leaned down, and pulled the Autobot’s legs up and out from under him, getting him in a cradle hold. 

Turmoil made an amused grunt. 

Deadlock snarled, turned away, and stormed out of the room. It wasn’t hard to hold the Autobot-- he was light, a racer frame, looked like, all pretty paint and the  _ spoiler  _ on the back of him. He was probably low on fuel, too-- his biolights were almost out.  _ Great.  _

If he died before getting to the medibay Deadlock was going to kill him.

He made his way down the hallway, choosing the longer passageway for its lack of stations; he didn’t need any more mecha than necessary looking at their fearsome SIC carrying a little Autobot like a sparkling. God, he was going to kill Turmoil for this. 

But his commander wouldn’t make Deadlock be the Autobot’s guard for  _ long.  _ He couldn’t. He needed Deadlock. Turmoil  _ needed  _ him.

Definitely.

Deadlock sighed, looking down at the Autobot. He was still silent and offline; probably a good thing, with the way Deadlock was holding him. Not that Deadlock cared, but his plating was all torn up and scorched and it looked like-- well, it looked like he had taken a long time to go down. 

“Hey, Deadlock,” came a voice from up ahead. A crew member. Deadlock ignored them, pushing past and using the Autobot’s dangling legs as extra leverage for the shove. It was a good shove. 

The mech  _ followed  _ him, unperturbed by the shove. “So you know about our guest, huh?”

Deadlock looked back at his pursuer. It was Broadwire, his tires even more shredded than usual. He smiled hesitantly at Deadlock, running to catch up. 

“I think it’s obvious I know,” Deadlock grunted, not slowing down.

“Well. . . yeah, I suppose,” Broadwire said, and craned his head to take a better look at Hot Rod. “He’s really out, isn’t he?”

Deadlock jerked away and didn’t answer.

“Well, I guess it makes sense, he was passed out when we brought him in from the escape pod and Turmoil didn’t even let Actinus finish fixing him up before he started. . . well, you know.” Broadwire gestured toward the Autobot’s body. Deadlock pulled away again, began walking faster. “Primus, it took a while before he stopped making noises. You’d have liked it, Deadlock.”

_ “Really,”  _ Deadlock grunted.

“He’s nice, though,” Broadwire said thoughtfully, and hastily added, “for an Autobot.” He twisted his hands together. “What are you gonna do with him?”

“I’m taking him to the medibay.” Deadlock said shortly. He turned to glare at Broadwire. “And unless Turmoil changed  _ everything  _ about the ship when I was gone, you have a bridge shift to be at right now.”

Broadwire ducked his head. “Heh, yeah. Sorry, Deadlock.” He glanced from Deadlock’s face to Hot Rod. “Turmoil isn’t too happy with you, huh?”

“He might be happier if I dump your aft in the brig for avoiding bridge duty,” Deadlock snarled.

“Okay! All right. I’m gonna go.” Broadwire put his hands up. “Primus.”

Deadlock watched him go.

“Alright,” he muttered to the still frame in his arms. “Just you and me, Autobot.”

The Autobot, predictably, said nothing.

“I think this is a standard example of what Turmoil’s been expecting me to repair for the past month and a half,” Actinus said tiredly, putting straps down around Hot Rod’s legs and arms. The mech lay facedown on the medibay table, his back, spoiler, and legs looking like a warzone in and of themselves. Deadlock stood in the doorway, his arms folded, and said nothing. “Primus, did he think the whip was going to make it easier to repair the circuitry damage?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. How long is it going to take?”

Actinus gave him a dirty look. “With the medibot out for repairs and Barrage off shift, pretty long.”

Deadlock looked toward the ceiling of the medibay for strength. It offered him peeling paint and a scorched blaster mark. “I don’t suppose I can leave.”

A huff. “Well, Stiltus always had to stay. I don’t know if Turmoil’s given you any more freedom than he had.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Deadlock demanded.

“What do you  _ think  _ I meant? I just told you what Stiltus had to do. I assume you’re taking his job.” Actinus shrugged and began flicking switches on the welding machine that he’d had wheeled over when Deadlock had brought Hot Rod in. Apparently, he’d known what to expect. 

“I. . . I am taking his job. For now. Just for now.” Deadlock sat down slowly, leaning his forearms on his knees. Too late, he realized that this seat gave him an even better view of what Turmoil had done to Hot Rod. Not that he cared. 

But it was-- it was so very much like Turmoil, he thought. To not just kill your enemy, but keep them to torture. Was that something Megatron had known about when he’d assigned Deadlock to Turmoil? Or did Megatron not care anymore?

Deadlock refused to think further. 

Actinus pulled out the gun from its handle on the machine and began cleaning it, scrubbing around the contact tip with some metal mesh. “If you’re going to be here, why don’t you help?”

Deadlock rolled his eyes. “I don’t think so.”

“Fine. But I’m by myself, so if you don’t help you’ll be in here longer.”

Deadlock glanced around; the medibay was clean and well-kept, with rows of tools hanging neatly on the walls and medical berths standing in careful rows, ready for the next bi-weekly accidental limb removal. It was a nice place. Exactly what a medibay should be.

Deadlock hated it.

It was too much like a repair clinic somewhere far away and long ago; a repair clinic with a drugged-out speedster lying sprawled on a table, clinging to the last scrap of life he had. A repair clinic with a mech inside who’d held his shoulder and told him, essentially, that he could do better. That he needed to do better. That he was special enough to do better.

For the longest time, Deadlock had thought that he had.

The Decepticons had been  _ better.  _ Megatron had been immeasurably  _ better,  _ his hand replacing the doctor’s on Deadlock’s-- Drift’s shoulder, then-- and renaming him,  _ claiming  _ him. He’d gone from starving to fed, from alone to protected, from powerless to powerful. Angry. Vengeful. Drunk on justice, near-wrecked on the high of revolution. It had been heaven. 

But. . . 

No. No ‘but.’ 

No doubts. Not even now, not even with Turmoil. No doubts, not ever.

“Deadlock?” Actinus asked.

“I’ll help,” Deadlock snapped. 

“Okay,” Actinus said cautiously, and gestured toward a wheel of coiled up wire. “That’s the filler metal for the weld. It has repair nanites in the center and it’ll help the wounds heal themselves quickly.” He gestured toward Hot Rod’s back. “Can you please load it onto the machine?”

“Seems like something you should have done yourself,” Deadlock grunted, and stood.

“I had very little warning,” Actinus said, glaring.

Deadlock, lifting the wheel into its position, laughed. “You think I had any more warning?”

“Please just get the wire in there.”

“Yes, Doc,” Deadlock snipped, and then shut up, because that was also too close to the repair clinic long ago, and he really,  _ really _ wanted to get out of here. He pulled the wire through the drive rolls, clipping it into the grooves, and guided it through the rest of the hose until it came out the end of the gun. 

Actinus shooed him away. “Thank you.”

“Whatever.” 

“There are quite a few repair welds to make, so I would get comfortable,” the doctor said, leaning down to get an angle with the gun into one of the slashes on Hot Rod’s back. “Eyes.”

Deadlock slid his visor down over his optics as the welding machine hummed to life, pouring molten filler metal into the wound with a flash of blinding ultraviolet light. Actinus ran the gun along the slash with a slight weave, filling in the torn edges and leaving a noticeable weld behind.

“There we are.” He raised his own visor, and smiled at Deadlock. “Only. . . thirty-seven left to go.”

“Oh, God.”

_ “Eyes,”  _ Actinus commanded, and began again.

Deadlock had begun doing maintenance on his pistols by the time the twenty-second weld came around. They didn’t need it, but it was something to do with his hands, and  _ he  _ needed it. He had decided that Turmoil was even more of an idiot than he’d thought before-- this was time consuming and pointless and not worth whatever sick pleasure his commander had gotten out of being able to use a fun toy like the electro-whip. 

Hot Rod still hadn’t woken up, either. Deadlock thought that maybe this would be more fun if he had-- Actinus was terrible conversation. The only thing he’d said for the past hour was a repeated warning of “ _ Eyes,”  _ which, Deadlock thought, was more pointless than the electrowhip. He was overcautious. Sure, a flash of the ultraviolet would hurt, but give it a day of self-repair and it’d be fine. 

Deadlock had heard of fleshlings that would die if exposed to ultraviolet light. Cyberforming crews in the Decepticon inner circles had discussed creating a weapon that would exterminate them with concentrated light, to save time and effort in the cyberforming process.

Well, they had been discussing that before Deadlock had been assigned to Turmoil. Who knew what they were discussing now.

Around the twenty-eighth weld, Deadlock started pacing.

“You’re not going to make me go faster that way,” Actinus called. “It’s distracting me.”

Deadlock hissed in frustration, turning sharply on his heel. “I should be planning an attack with Turmoil right now.”

“What, the Accentia invasion?”

“Yes!” Deadlock turned back to Actinus, his eyes widening. “What do you know about it?”

“I know you’ve been trying to get him to invade for a long time now. Over two years, if I’m counting correctly.”

“And did he--”

_ “Eyes.” _

Deadlock snarled, turning his back as the gun crackled to life again. “What has he said about it? Has he made any plans?”

“As far as I know? No. He doesn’t want to invade there, Deadlock, and you know it.”

Fucking  _ idiot!  _ “I’m his Second in Command! I have to have  _ some  _ say in what he does and doesn’t do!” Deadlock clenched his fists. Everything in him wanted to abandon the medibay and go to Turmoil, demand to know why the Accentia attack had gone on hold. “I specifically asked him to continue setting up for it when I was gone, that fucking--”

“Deadlock, the rest of the ship may not have cameras but the medibay does.”

“Yeah, you know why the ship doesn’t have a decent surveillance system?” Deadlock sneered. “Because I was the one who suggested it to him and he won’t do fucking  _ anything  _ I want him to, will he?”

“Seems like you want him to kill you,” Actinus observed mildly. “Eyes.”

Deadlock snorted. “I’d love to see him try that.”

“Hm,” Actinus said, moving along the weld he was making.

“What is  _ that  _ supposed to mean?” 

“You seem to think I’m saying a lot of things with hidden meanings,” Actinus said dryly.

“Oh, you’re a  _ fountain  _ of wisdom today, you--”

_ “Eyes _ , Deadlock.”

“Oh,  _ fuck  _ you!” Deadlock whirled again, throwing his hands in the air. “Fuck you, fuck him, and fuck this fucking Autobot who should be fucking dead right now, okay? Fuck this!” He kicked the berth. 

Actinus put the gun down harder than normal. “You’d better be thankful I was done with that weld--”

“Or what?” Deadlock spat.

“You know, it’s pretty much generally accepted that you don’t make an enemy of your only doctor, but perhaps that’s not how it works back in  _ Decepticon high command,” _ Actinus said spitefully.

“Shut up,” Deadlock snarled.

“Oh, please. It’s obvious you don’t want to be here and you think you deserve better than what you’re getting right now. Well, here’s a little hint for you, Deadlock, alright? You  _ don’t. _ Megatron put you here, which means your golden boy status is gone and dead. You’re under Turmoil now, so you’d better get used to it.” Actinus stared him down for a while longer, and when it was obvious Deadlock wasn’t going to say anything in his defense, turned back to his work. “Sit down. Cover your eyes. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

Deadlock sat down.

Actinus had better be thankful Deadlock wasn’t in the mood to fight with him right now, he thought. 

He put his helm in his hands and waited for the doctor to finish.

“He’ll need to stay off his back for a while.”

“Hm?” Deadlock said, lifting his face blearily from his hands.

Actinus sighed. “The welds are done. They’re still fresh and you’ll need to make sure he stays off of his back for a while until they mesh completely with his plating and the paint nanites can reform.”

“You’re done?” Deadlock stood. The Autobot lay on his front, his optics offlined and his back covered with streaks of grey where the welds were laid. “Can I take him back?”

“Hm. Turmoil instructed me to give you a more detailed list of orders regarding your bodyguard duties.”

Deadlock groaned, looking up at the ceiling of the medibay again. “Fine. What is it?”

“Give me your wrist.”

Deadlock squinted at Actinus, holding his arms by his sides. “Why?”

“I need to transfer the file.”

“No.”

“For Primus’ sake, you-- I’m not asking to see your code, I’m going to transfer a file. Doctor’s oaths still apply during wartime.”

“I trust you with my coding about as much as I’d trust Turmoil,” Deadlock sneered. “Just tell me. I’ll copy it into my own file.”

“Stubborn glitch,” Actinus muttered. “Fine. You remain with him at all times. The only time you may leave his side is when Turmoil takes him into his quarters to make more of  _ these _ for me to repair, or-- whatever our commander decides to do to him. I don’t know. But you’d better hope it takes a while, because you’re going to only have that time for yourself.”

Deadlock stared. “What about recharge?”

“You recharge with him, too. Stiltus hated that,” Actinus offered, with a wry smile. “He’d cuff Hot Rod to the berth.”

“This is ridiculous!” Deadlock exploded. “If he wants to keep him alive, fine. But why isn’t he in the brig?”

“I. Don’t. Know. It was Turmoil’s decision, and it’s not my job  _ or yours  _ to question it.” Actinus glared at him. 

“Fine. Fine! What else.”

“He has regular appointments with Manibus to be experimented on. Every other day, whenever Manibus contacts you to bring him in. He’s always busy in there, so he’ll let you know when he’s open. Unfortunately, Turmoil wants you to stay with him for that, too. Yes, Stiltus used to be able to have free time during the appointments but,” Actinus smiled briefly, “he wouldn’t come pick him back up for ages.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Deadlock saw the Autobot stir. His optics sputtered online, and his helm turned to the side.

Their eyes met.

“Finally,” Actinus said, and Deadlock pulled his gaze back to the doctor, “under  _ no  _ circumstances do you let him die.”

“Heh,” Deadlock said.

“Or get killed yourself,” Actinus added snidely.

“Fuck off,” Deadlock said. “He’s awake. I’m taking him back to my quarters.”

Actinus waved his hand. “Fine. Let me unstrap him.”

Deadlock followed. As Actinus began to release the straps holding the Autobot’s legs down, he crouched so as to see his charge’s face better.

“Nice to meet you,” the Autobot said, and winked at him. “Are you my new best friend?”

“My name is Deadlock,” Deadlock said. 

The Autobot’s eyes widened, and for the split second that recognition flashed in them, Deadlock felt something on the edge of hope that perhaps, just perhaps, this Autobot would be intimidated enough by his reputation to be a quiet, obedient, and manageable prisoner for the (short) period that Deadlock was his bodyguard.

Then the mech smiled, and Deadlock’s hope somehow knew enough to die a quiet death. “My name’s Hot Rod.”

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no im not a welder ahaha why would you say that wh... what lol.. 
> 
> but yes i did write this instead of doing my online welding homework bc the very concept of learning welding online is ridiculous and I'm protesting
> 
> comments always appreciated!!


	4. Chapter 4

“He goes to Manibus tomorrow,” Actinus had said, quietly, as Hot Rod took wobbly, careful steps around the medibay and Deadlock nearly vibrated in his place, eager to leave. “Promise me that you won’t let him sleep on his back, those welds are going to be a bitch to clean out and remake if he breaks them open.”

“Sure,” Deadlock said, his teeth gritted.

Actinus offered him a small smile. “Don’t feel too badly about all this. I’ve heard he’s quite the entertainer.”

“Love you too, Doc,” Hot Rod called from across the room.

Actinus put his mouth in a thin line and turned back to the welding machine, beginning to shut it down.

“Same time next week?” Hot Rod asked, but by then Deadlock was already crossing the room to leave, taking Actinus’ silence as a signal to make his escape. He opened the door, made a gesture at Hot Rod to go through, and felt it shut behind both of them with a final-sounding  _ whoosh  _ that matched the relieved vent he made as he finally got out of the medibay.

And then he looked down at the mech beside him.

Yeah, he wasn’t out of the woods yet.

“So it’s Deadlock, huh?” said Hot Rod. He was looking up at him with that half-smile still infuriatingly present, his optics bright and wide. “Sounds familiar.”

Deadlock started walking. He didn’t have time for this-- he was tired and upset and he needed a good defrag cycle before he could even start to  _ think  _ about dealing with any of-- any of all this shit. 

Behind him, he heard Hot Rod run to catch up. Good. So he wouldn’t be a prisoner who would need to be dragged around places in magna-cuffs. Little victories.

“Is there a reason you’re my new guard?” Hot Rod asked, walking fast to match Deadlock’s gait. 

“No.”

“Are you some other Decepticon named Deadlock I don’t know about that happens to look exactly like the famous Decepticon named Deadlock?”

“Wh--  _ no.” _

“Hm,” Hot Rod said. 

Deadlock glared down at him. “What?”

Hot Rod looked him up and down, his spoiler flicking slightly, before he shrugged and said, “Nothing. Good to have that cleared up.”

“Glad I could help you out,” Deadlock muttered.

They walked on through the ship’s corridors. Deadlock found himself aching to fold down to alt-mode and drive to his quarters. But of  _ course-- _

“Let me see your mouth flower,” he said, stopping in the middle of the passageway. 

Hot Rod blinked at him. “What?”

Deadlock didn’t need to tell the Autobot that he made a habit of never implicitly trusting anything that Turmoil told him, and was simply covering his bases just in case he’d been lied to again. “Open. I want to see if the mouth flower is in there.”

The Autobot shrugged again. He pressed a finger against his glossa and opened his mouth, letting Deadlock take his chin between two fingers and peer up into the roof of his intake. There it was-- a little round signal that Deadlock would be walking nearly everywhere for however long Turmoil deigned to keep him on this project.

Which  _ wouldn’t  _ be long.

“Why would it not be in there?” Hot Rod asked, an amused smile beginning to form again.

“Let’s go,” Deadlock growled, and began making his way to his quarters again.

Turmoil hadn’t turned his room into a storage area while he was gone, so there was that. There  _ were _ a few unfamiliar empty cubes of high-grade tossed in the corner, but Deadlock was half-sure he’d left those there before he went on his mission, so he wasn’t too worried about them. 

What he  _ was  _ worried about was currently wandering the room, a wide-eyed expression on his face.

If he’d tried for an escape attempt with Stiltus, there was no telling what he’d think he could do with Deadlock. Some ground rules were necessary-- at the very least, Deadlock would need to make sure Hot Rod knew exactly who he was dealing with.

“Hey,” he said.

“Is this your washracks?” Hot Rod called. “It’s so big! What’s all the empty space for, huh? Do you have group showers?”

_ “Hey,”  _ Deadlock repeated. He rolled his eyes, and growled, “Hot Rod.”

“That’s my name,” Hot Rod agreed, finally turning back to him.

“If you’re going to be recharging with me, in this room, and you don’t want to be handcuffed to the other berth for the whole night, we need to get some things straight.” Deadlock put his hands on his hips and matched gazes with the Autobot, who was approaching now with something close to calculating interest on his face. It was eerie how quickly the expression disappeared as soon as he noted Deadlock watching him, replaced with the same wide-eyed and guileless smile as before. 

“What’s up?” he said.

Deadlock slid his hands into his subspace pockets and pulled out his twin guns; Hot Rod tensed, just the smallest bit, his spoiler flicking once again in a traitorous move that belied exactly how nervous he was around Deadlock, despite his cavalier attitude. 

“Look,” Deadlock ordered, and held out his pistols for observation. Hot Rod’s eyes followed his movements as he spun them on his fingers for extra effect. He’d learned how to do that trick 400 years ago and couldn’t resist pulling it as often as possible now.

“Teach me how to do that?” Hot Rod asked, a grin quirking the side of his mouth.

“Shut up. You know who I am, which means you know I could shoot you in the time it takes to try and steal one of these from me. But you’re also going to see me sleeping, which means I’ll look like my guard’s down.” Deadlock leveled eyes with his charge. “I put my guns in my subspace when I’m recharging.” He slid them back into the subspace pockets near his hips, and folded his arms across his chest. “Try and take them out.”

Hot Rod raised an orbital ridge. 

“You might as well do it now before you give it a go tonight when I’m asleep,” Deadlock snapped. “Try and take them.”

Hot Rod stepped closer, his spoiler twitching slightly again, and squinted up at him. Slowly, he placed one hand on Deadlock’s side and put the other into one of the subspace pockets. His fingers were points of heat against Deadlock’s plating-- he ran hot, apparently. Deadlock sensed the warmth of his other hand curl around the handle of the gun in the subspace and begin to pull out.

And then Hot Rod grunted, surprised, as his hand was caught, halfway out of the pocket. Deadlock grinned as the mini-forcefield began to glow at his hip, freezing Hot Rod’s hand in place.

“That’s a little something I have to thank Manibus for,” he said, and watched Hot Rod struggle for a few moments longer to pull his hand out before he stopped, glaring up at Deadlock. “The security lock is keyed to codes I have inserted in my wrists. I need to enter a password through my HUD as a secondary measure-- can’t have you using my own hands to get my guns out-- but if the lock doesn’t sense the code, it won’t let anything be removed from the subspace.”

“Fine, so I can’t get your guns,” Hot Rod said. “What if I do something else to you while you’re recharging? What if I steal a wrench from Actinus and bash your head in?”

Deadlock stared down at him. “I’ll know.” 

Hot Rod snorted. “Oh, you will?”

Deadlock put his hand into his subspace, grabbed hold of Hot Rod’s and pulled it out. “I recharge on 15% effectiveness.”

“No wonder you’re so angry,” Hot Rod muttered, his hand flexing inside of Deadlock’s.

Deadlock dropped his hand. “The point being that I would wake up if you even came within a foot of me.”

Hot Rod stepped away from him. “All right, fine. So it might take me a little while. But Stiltus had me handcuffed on the other side of the room for a month and a half and I  _ still  _ found a way to get away from him.”

He was venting harder than normal, Deadlock noticed; his eyes were bright and his field was slipping past the edges of normal and tucked-in. He might be putting up a front of being brave and carefree and defiant, but he was upset. 

Deadlock wasn’t in the mood to dig his claws into the Autobot’s devil-may-care attitude and pull, so he simply shrugged. “And that was Stiltus. I’m not Stiltus.”

“Oh, that’s for sure.”

Deadlock, cognizant of how many times he had asked what that was supposed to mean today, held his tongue and simply tilted his head, waiting for the Autobot to elaborate.

Hot Rod mirrored his head tilt. “I mean, I know I haven’t been here long, so this is just my opinion, but it seems like you’re a little too important of a Decepticon to be stuck being a bodyguard for little old me.”

Deadlock snarled. 

As his field darkened with his rage, Hot Rod’s smile reappeared and grew.

“So I was right,” he said, his voice quietly delighted.

How  _ dare  _ he?

“You’re wrong,” Deadlock spat, his hands useless at his sides, reeling, attempting to recover the ground Hot Rod had stolen with that one sentence. “You-- I’m not going to be with you for long, this is  _ interim,  _ and you--”

“I’m sure it will be,” Hot Rod said reassuringly, the slag-eating grin on his face taunting Deadlock. “I’m sure I won’t even get a chance for an escape attempt with you, with how fast you’re going to be leaving.”

“You-- you-- we’re recharging,” Deadlock said desperately, scrambling for something to hold onto. “We are recharging and tomorrow you are going to Manibus’ like Actinus said and that’s  _ it.” _

Hot Rod nodded. “Mm-hm. And when are you going to be leaving to go do important Deadlock things that aren’t guarding me?”

“Berth,” Deadlock growled,  _ “now.” _

“Aw, I haven’t been told to recharge like that since--” Hot Rod started to say, in the same tone of voice as before, before he stopped suddenly and shut his mouth. He climbed on the berth silently, wincing as the movement stretched his welds.

“Lie on your front,” Deadlock ordered. 

“I think I really am going to like you,” Hot Rod said, suddenly cheerful, crawling onto his front to lie down. “Don’t take what I say too seriously. Just doing my bit to keep this ship going. Morale and all that. Can’t slack off and only help Turmoil out, hm?”

There was something unappealing in his smile, in the way that he casually threw out the words and in the way that he looked at Deadlock while he said them. 

What he was doing was empty and they both knew it.

“Remember what I said,” Deadlock said, sitting down on his own berth. “The door’s locked, my guns are in my subspace, and I’ll wake up if you come near me. Just recharge.” He glanced at Hot Rod out of the corner of his eye. “You’ll need it.”

Hot Rod did not attempt to kill Deadlock.

It wasn’t like he had really thought he could have. Not with the whole. . . escape attempt fiasco of yesterday, and what had followed. 

Hot Rod refused to think about what had followed. He refused to acknowledge the welds slowly fusing their way into his plating and refused to let his memory files even begin to sort out the events of yesterday morning and afternoon. If he remembered the terrible sound of the whip and the staticked cracking of his own voice as it drove him to frantic shrieks of pain, he would break, and he couldn’t break. He had to hold on. He  _ would  _ hold on.

For now, he would have to hold on just a little bit longer. 

Deadlock was. . . something different, he thought. A new addition to the puzzle. He wasn’t what Hot Rod was used to, and that made him interesting. 

Hot Rod had a feeling that if he tried his ‘I’m small and naive and you shouldn’t think much of me’ routine on Deadlock, the Con would see through it in a second. Benefits of being a big, important Decepticon, he guessed.

_ What’s up with that anyway?  _

He’d been on the money with the dig about Deadlock being assigned to watch him. It had been a surprising gift-- something he could use to make an equal standing in the relationship he’d no doubt have with the Con. Deadlock had been  _ upset.  _

After the day Hot Rod had had, it was nice to have a little victory like that.

Even if he knew that the next day would be just as awful as ever.

Still, it was  _ weird.  _ Deadlock was more than well-known in Autobot circles. A word to describe him might have been  _ scary.  _ The big bad Decepticon sharpshooter, made infamous early in the war for taking down a patrol of mecha with nothing but his claws and teeth. The ones that had survived had spread terrifying tales about the experience-- how they’d disarmed him but had been unprepared for the vicious, bloody reception they’d gotten when they came too close, believing he’d go down without a fight. 

Hot Rod had always assumed the  _ teeth  _ part of the story had been exaggeration, but today, getting a closer look than he’d ever expected or wanted to get at the glint of Deadlock’s fangs and the way they fit over each other, bared as he snarled, well. . . let’s just say he was going to apologize to Hyperion, whenever he saw the mech again, about doubting his tale of “mecha’s throat cabling being ripped out and energon dripping from Deadlock’s fangs like he was tossing back a cube of high grade.”

Yeah, Deadlock was scary.

Deadlock was also  _ surprisingly  _ easy to make fun of, a prerequisite of that trait being that he was at least borderline easy to talk to.

Those were things Hot Rod appreciated in a mech. 

You know who  _ hadn’t  _ had those traits? Stiltus. You could talk to Stiltus all day long and sure, he’d answer you, but would he really  _ talk  _ to you? No, he wouldn’t.

Hot Rod knew he’d always be trying to block out the memory of Stiltus’ head being crushed, his blood dripping down onto the floor. It had been necessary, he knew, he  _ knew,  _ but-- 

It had all been for nothing, hadn’t it?

_ Not for nothing.  _ He’d learned. He’d learned what it would take to at least leave the ship, he’d learned that. . . that Blaster was no good for a comm line for help, and he’d learned what Turmoil would do to him if he ever caught him trying to escape again. 

And he’d gotten Deadlock.

His mysterious new bodyguard.

His mysterious new bodyguard who was currently steering him through the hallways of the ship, his shoulders set forward, his hands clenched, and his face an angry mask. Hot Rod thought he knew what the issue was.

“You don’t like being seen with me, do you?” he asked, a grin starting to curl at his mouth as he looked up at Deadlock. 

“What?” Deadlock said.

“You don’t like the crew seeing you walk around with me, huh?”

“I-- no, that’s not it,” Deadlock snapped. “I’m just tired.”

Hot Rod nodded sagely. “Oh, because you were too nervous having me in your room to recharge properly?”

Deadlock blinked at him for a moment, then closed his eyes and lifted his head upwards. “I don’t deserve this. I did nothing to deserve this.”

Hot Rod glared at him sideways.  _ Oh, and I deserve this?  _ he wanted to say, but he knew that would lose him his edge and he couldn’t lose his edge, not right now. He stayed silent.

Deadlock  _ was  _ having a bad time, though. It was obvious. They walked by a group of crew members-- Hot Rod recognized one of them as Barrage, Actinus’ assistant-- and Deadlock seemed to bristle as their eyes followed him, skipping from Hot Rod to his bodyguard and back. 

Hot Rod smiled at them. Barrage smiled back, waving a little before he caught himself. It was a _ little _ funny.

Deadlock didn’t think so. His engine kept up a low growl as they went past, and his shoulders grew even more hunched.

“Wanna talk about it?” Hot Rod offered.

Deadlock gave him a dirty look.

“What happened to ‘arrggh, I’m Deadlock, I’m big and mean and you can’t get my guns out of my stupid subspace pockets,’ huh?”

“I told you,” Deadlock gritted out, “I didn’t recharge well.”

Hot Rod folded his arms and smiled tiredly. “Well, you’ll get a lot of time to recharge when I’m at Manibus’, I guess.” The scientist was probably aching to get a look at his code again after he’d-- after he’d dipped on him yesterday.

“Sitting next to you for eight hours? Yeah, guess I will.” Deadlock’s tone was bitter.

Hot Rod cocked his head. “What? No. You get to leave when I’m in there. Go do whatever you want.” He chuckled. “It’s my alone time.”

“Rules have changed, Autobot. I’m stuck with you for your  _ alone time,  _ too.” Deadlock rolled his eyes. “Aren’t we pleased.”

Hot Rod felt his orbital ridges raise, and he said, “Huh.”

So there were long-term effects to his escape attempt, too. Turmoil was smarter than Hot Rod had given him credit for. He might take immediate revenge against Hot Rod, but he’d also make sure he was guarded more consistently. Smart. Bad news for Hot Rod, but smart.

“Bet you’re real happy about that,” he said cautiously.

Deadlock’s engine revved sharper, and his field whipped outside of normal bounds for a half second, letting Hot Rod get a startling taste of  _ anger-confusion-doubt  _ that retreated as soon as it had come. He stared up at the larger mech.

_ Hadn’t expected that, either. _

If Deadlock was feeling  _ doubt. . .  _ doubt about what? About his assignment? Hot Rod had assumed he was angry, yes, but the doubt was more palpable than the anger.

If Deadlock was having doubts, that might just be Hot Rod’s next way out.

It’d have to be carefully done. It would mean having to  _ make friendly  _ with this absolute aft-head. But could Hot Rod do it?

Oh, absolutely.

“That’s the way to the gun bank,” he pointed out, as they passed it. He was conscious that they were growing ever-closer to the creepy scientist’s lab, and a sense of panic was beginning to worm its way into his spark chamber. It bit at him. 

“I know.”

“Well, I’m refreshing your memory.”

Deadlock snorted. 

“Hey, which one of us has actually been on this ship for the last month and a half?” Hot Rod questioned, but he didn’t make it mean, even if he could have. Operation “do not be antagonistic to Deadlock” was underway. 

Deadlock, apparently, still found a way to take it badly. He shot Hot Rod another dirty look, his claws clenching into fists. Hot Rod’s eyes dropped to them, imagining them tearing through plating and lines and dripping with blood. 

“Hey, you can recharge sitting next to the experimentation table,” he offered. Even saying the words brought a shiver of apprehension down his spinal column-- he really did not want to go to Manibus and bare his code. He felt as if he were fighting for every step he took forward.

“Recharge around Manibus?” Deadlock snorted. “That’ll be the day.”

“He’ll be too focused on me to mess with you, I bet.”

“That’s sweet, Autobot, but I think you’re the one who needs your memory refreshed.” Deadlock folded his arms as they neared the lab doors. “But hey. Guess you’ll get a chance to do that right now.”

Hot Rod slowed, and stopped right in front of the entrance to the lab.

He could have cried. He didn’t want to go in. He didn’t want to take a step forward and willingly put himself on that table and open his ports and let a Decepticon sadist examine his code for hours. He couldn’t. He  _ couldn’t.  _ Deadlock would have to pick him up and carry him in and Hot Rod would fight him and then Turmoil would know and Turmoil would-- Turmoil would--

Deadlock reached over his head and pressed the button to open the door. He was a large and solid presence at Hot Rod’s back, and even if it should have made Hot Rod feel trapped, between him and Manibus, it didn’t. He shrank back into Deadlock, feeling his unyielding frame more as a grounding point than anything else. His healing welds protested as they met Deadlock’s plating, pointed and sharp, but he could hardly think of them now.

“Hey,” Deadlock said. “Time to go in.”

Hot Rod felt his spoiler quiver. “I know.”

“So go in.”

Hot Rod wrapped his arms around himself and shook his head.

“Autobot--” There was a sigh from above him, and Deadlock pressed the button again, sliding the door shut. “Fine. We wait.”

They stood there for a moment. Hot Rod dug his fingers into the plating on his arms and squeezed his eyes shut and focused on slowing the vent rate that his frame had worked itself up to. He had to go in. He had to go in, and he had to suffer through this nonsense and he had to  _ survive  _ it, because escape would be pointless if he was dead. That was what he had to focus on.

Escape. Escape. Escape.

He was okay.

“Okay,” he said, eventually, straightening and squaring up his shoulders. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

Deadlock wordlessly pressed the button.

“Thank you,” Hot Rod said begrudgingly, and stepped into the lab.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think that there is definitely a moment in this chapter where Roddy remembered Nyon because I am awful and cruel


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to @bmac413 for beta!!

The ceiling of Deadlock’s quarters was boring as slag, Hot Rod decided, staring up at it from his position on the berth.

Just like the rest of it. There were only so many times you could go into the washracks and play around with the fancy streams of cleanser before you realized that a shower was really only fun if you could get off in it and he sure as hell wasn’t getting off with Deadlock sitting in the other room-- not watching him, but he might as well have been.

The rest of the mech’s quarters was plain, if a bit messy-- the last time Hot Rod had seen a floor so littered with bits of junk had been. . . well, it had been before all of this. When he lived by himself. 

Yeah. During that time.

But Manibus had fucked up with his coding the last time Hot Rod had visited the mech’s lab, leaving him with a glitch that sporadically locked up all of the joints in his body-- completely random, unless Manibus had done it on purpose. 

He could still remember coming online to see the mech, his four pairs of hands twitching nervously, looking down at one of Hot Rod’s legs-- which, he had realized, was  _ smoking  _ with joint damage. Apparently, before Manibus had decided to pull him out of stasis, he’d thought about trying to see if the “bodily control” coding he’d been trying out would still work with Hot Rod’s frame on lockdown. 

It had not.

So that had been fun.

But Actinus-- bless him, Hot Rod thought, not for the first time-- had given out the order that Hot Rod was not to be touched for the remainder of the week, while the virus blockers he’d sent into Hot Rod’s data streams did their work. 

Thank Primus for good medics.

Obviously, Deadlock was still sulking over. . . whatever he was upset about, which Hot Rod was beginning to suspect had something to do with his babysitting duty of a certain Autobot.So he’d refused to leave his quarters. 

And of course, that meant Hot Rod was stuck in there too.

Deadlock spent most of his time disassembling a  _ lot  _ of guns, his hands moving at almost the speed of light as he flicked the parts out of their holdings, oiled the hydraulics, and cleaned out the barrels. Hot Rod had watched, for the first three repetitions of the same fourteen guns, but there were only so many times you could watch a guy take apart a gun. It was cool, but not  _ that  _ cool.

And he wouldn’t talk to Hot Rod all that much, either.

_ That  _ was a little disappointing. 

It wasn’t even because Hot Rod was trying to get on his good side  in the hopes of maybe-possibly- getting help with a second escape attempt . . . much. He really was genuinely curious about Deadlock. 

Hot Rod figured that if you were stuck in a room with the most dangerous Decepticon sharpshooter since. . . well, since ever, really, you should at least take the chance to get to know him. 

“Do you really rip people’s throats out with your teeth?” he asked, lying on the berth and hanging halfway off, upside down, lazily watching Deadlock put together his guns.

Deadlock said, “Yes.”

“Oh,” Hot Rod said. “When was the last time you did that?”

Deadlock didn’t answer.

“Do you drink people’s blood?”

Deadlock put his gun down hard. “Shut up.”

“I’m just trying to have a conversation,” Hot Rod pointed out, inserting a wounded note into his voice. “Come on. I’m bored.”

“You being bored is the last thing I care about right now.”

Hot Rod kicked the wall. “Right, because I’m a high-level prisoner who has to be watched at all times.”

“You’re hardly high-level,” Deadlock snorted.

“Oh yeah? How come you’re watching me right now instead of ripping people’s throats out, then, huh?”

Deadlock growled.

Inwardly, Hot Rod cringed. He’d forgotten that he was supposed to be getting Deadlock to like him. But there was something about him-- something that made Hot Rod just rile, want to fight and bicker and say the pettiest things. He imagined getting Deadlock so angry that he snapped, lunged at Hot Rod and pinned him to the wall, leaned over him with those fangs and that engine humming hot, and  _ snarled. . . _

Hot Rod blinked, shocked at himself.

No! No, he was  _ not  _ imagining that! 

Had the isolation really gotten to him that badly, he wondered, and mourned at the loss of standards he’d barely even had before-- before all this. For Primus’ fucking sake, he was a prisoner on a Decepticon ship being tortured bi-weekly, if that was the right word, and he had absolutely no excuse for finding his goddamn  _ jailor  _ hot.

Deadlock had gone back to his guns, unaware of the sudden inner crisis that Hot Rod was experiencing.  _ Bastard. _

“I’m hungry,” Hot Rod said. Anything to get out of the room. Anything to get his mind off of that traitorous moment of weakness. 

Deadlock sighed loudly, putting his gun down again. “For Primus sake, Hot Rod--”

“If we go out to get fuel I will recharge,” Hot Rod promised. “And I’ll do it on full effectiveness so you don’t even have to  _ hear  _ me.”

Deadlock laughed. “Oh, so you actually pay attention to me when I tell you you’re a loud sleeper?”

“It was extremely hurtful and I took it to heart,” Hot Rod said, folding his hands and grinning back.

Deadlock broke his gaze and turned away, picking up the gun closest to the wall. “No. I’m not done with these yet.”

“But when you  _ are _ done?”

Deadlock huffed. 

Hot Rod waited patiently. 

“Sure,” Deadlock said, tossing one hand in the air. “We’ll go fuel.”

_ “Yes,”  _ Hot Rod said. He climbed to his feet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to retire to the washracks for my pre-fueling shower.”

He was  _ positive  _ he heard a chuckle from Deadlock as he left the room.

“Yeah! I’m not kidding, I saw it with my own eyes. Threw him right over his shoulder and didn’t look back. He’s not the spymaster for nothing.”

Deadlock actually looked  _ interested.  _ “I met Jazz once, but nothing so close quarters.”

“Yeah, I can tell. You’re still alive,” Hot Rod laughed. 

“Well,” Deadlock said, shaking his head, “I’ll keep it in mind.”

Hot Rod looked up to see the door of the habsuite approaching. Well. Time for another eight hours of recharge he didn’t need. At least it was better than being tortured.

What did it say about his current situation that he was making comparisons like  _ that,  _ he wondered.

“Go in,” Deadlock ordered, offhand, as the door slid open. He was still doing that slag, like it gave him some sort of comfort to order Hot Rod around for things he’d do regardless. 

“You still working on that personality of yours?” Hot Rod said, shaking his head as he entered. 

Deadlock sighed as the door shut behind him, turning to stare at Hot Rod. “It’s like you really don’t understand that I am not your friend, Autobot.”

Hot Rod froze.

Under normal circumstances, he would have an immediate comeback to send at Deadlock-- something snappy and clever, but not too nasty, adding another brick to the eventual wall of “get Deadlock to be your friend” that he hoped to build. But he could hardly think of anything to say. 

It was all overshadowed by the massive realization that Deadlock hadn’t locked the door behind him.

Deadlock, apparently, had been expecting Hot Rod’s response as well, and blinked at him for a moment before leaving the door and walking back to the pile of guns he’d left on the ground. “Okay. Remember what you said. Go recharge.”

Hot Rod shook himself. “Yeah. I suppose I’ve gotta honor that, huh? Being the good person that I am. Give you a few hours of peace.”

Deadlock snorted. “Please do.”

Hot Rod got on the berth.

_ Deadlock had forgotten to lock the door. _

He shuttered his optics.

_ Deadlock had forgotten to lock the door. _

Well....

Someone would have to  _ possibly _ take advantage of that when they woke up.

Primus did love him after all.

Hot Rod had onlined his optics-- his chronometer told him he’d been recharging for six hours, not as long as he’d thought-- and looked over, immediately, to see if Deadlock had decided to recharge as well.

By some miracle, there he was, flat on his back on the berth and his optics just on the edge of offlined. Asleep, even if a step within four feet of the recharge slab would have him sitting up, blinking angrily at Hot Rod.

It would be remiss of Hot Rod to  _ not _ weigh the pros and cons. Pro: Deadlock had forgotten to lock the door. Con: If Hot Rod tried another escape attempt, without prior planning, he would most likely be caught and-- well. He would be caught.

So this couldn’t be an escape attempt.

But-- practice for an escape attempt. An adventure. 

Making Deadlock angry.

Yeah, he’d do that.

And against all probability, when he’d tiptoed to the door to test it, to see if Deadlock had really just left it unlocked, it  _ had  _ been. 

What else could he do but try and see how far he’d get?

“Hey,” Outburst said, tapping Barrage on the shoulder. “Look, it’s the little Autobot.”

“Hot Rod?” Barrage asked, turning to look.

“If you say so,” Outburst said, chuckling. “So he’s still alive, huh?”

“Yeah.” Barrage folded his arms and preened. “Me and Actinus, we know how to do our jobs.”

“Man, shut up about being the damn medic’s assistant. You weren’t even on duty when he got all fixed up.”

“I was-- it still counts, and you know it. Hey, Hot Rod.” 

“Hi, Barrage.” Hot Rod stopped by the station Outburst had been manning, and put his hands on his hips, smiling. “What’s up?”

“I should be asking you that,” Barrage said, pointing a finger at the Autobot. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Deadlock?”

Hot Rod winked at him. “I gave Deadlock the day off.”

“Oh-h-h,” Outburst said, putting their hands on their hips. “I’m impressed, Autobot. You’re not worried about what he’ll do?”

“He’s gotta catch me first,” Hot Rod said, grinning.

“Okay, but remember to stay out of Turmoil’s sight,” Barrage cautioned. “He’s on the bridge today.” He caught Outburst looking at him sideways, and added, “I just don’t want to have to spend my medibay shift fixing up your dumbass after you get caught.”

“Will do, Barrage,” Hot Rod said. “Thanks.”

“So,” Outburst said casually, leaning against the station, “what do you plan to do when Deadlock catches up with you?”

Hot Rod shrugged. 

“You two seem to be getting on fine. He hasn’t killed you yet.” Outburst mimicked Hot Rod’s shrug. “So. . . what’s the secret?”

Hot Rod squinted. “Secret?”

Outburst gestured vaguely with both hands. 

“Outburst thinks he’s pretty,” Barrage said, and laughed as Outburst slapped him hard, shoving him against the monitor. “They think they have a chance with him-- ow, Outburst,  _ ow!” _

Hot Rod laughed. “Sorry, there’s no secret. Unless you want to trade places with me, get a do-not-kill order from Turmoil on your head.”

“Hmph,” Outburst said, relenting from their attack on Barrage. “Whatever. I don’t know why you’re out here risking it, though.” They squinted at him. “You’re not trying to escape again, right?”

Hot Rod’s spoiler flicked rapidly for a moment-- from what little Barrage had picked up from his flight-frame comrades, that kind of motion usually only happened when the mech was  _ angry.  _ But Hot Rod didn’t  _ look  _ angry. Maybe he was misremembering.

“Nope!” he said cheerfully. “I mean, after what happened last time, why would I, right?”

Outburst laughed. Hot Rod joined in. Hesitantly, Barrage did as well. The three of them stood there, chuckling together in a hallway over something that really wasn’t all that funny but-- but Hot Rod was laughing about it, so it was okay, right?

“You did kill Stiltus, though,” he said, suddenly sober.

Hot Rod shrugged again. “Wish I hadn’t.”

“Joltrazor told me she had to scrape pieces of brain module off of the door,” Outburst said, their voice darkly fascinated.

Hot Rod’s spoiler flicked again. “I should go. Gotta stay ahead of Deadlock, y’know.” He grinned at Barrage, and turned to Outburst. “If he comes through here, you can tell him which way I went. Might get you on his good side.”

And then he was off, down the hallway.

“He’s a weird mech, you ever notice that?” Outburst said.

Barrage shrugged. “Autobots. What do you expect?”

Deadlock sat up.

“I heard you walking around,” he said accusingly, turning to stare at Hot Rod across the room. “If you think that I. . .”

He stopped.

Empty berth, light filtering in through the tell-tale open door, half-cracked in a tauntingly purposefully way. The air was cold around Deadlock’s body and Hot Rod was gone.

Deadlock curled his hands into fists.

“I’m going to kill him,” he said.

Hot Rod poked his head into the training room, observing the mecha milling about, a line of them halfway down the center shooting at targets as best they could. On the left side, closest to where he stood, pairs of them fought hand-to-hand, the _clangs_ of fists on plating reverberating. Hot Rod flinched, fascinated, as a mech fell to the ground, clutching a shattered jaw. His partner whooped for a second before pulling him to his feet and dragging him off to a passageway Hot Rod knew-- intimately-- was the way to the medibay.

He spotted a mech across the room entering alone. Hot Rod sized him up-- just about his size, probably a grounder, judging by those beat-up tires. 

Oh, he was dying for a fight. Something he could do on his own terms, have a decent chance of winning.

“Hey!” he called, and trotted over to where the mech was. “Hi! I know you, uh. . . you’re Broadwire, right?”

Broadwire blinked. “Y-yeah, but you--”

_ “Yes,  _ it’s me, the resident Autobot captive. Hey, do you want to fight?”

The Decepticon looked him up and down. “What are you doing here by yourself?”

Hot Rod sighed. “Just having a little fun. So. Do you want to fight or not?”

Broadwire ruffled his plating a little. “Well. . .”

“Aw, come on.” Hot Rod stepped backwards into a more open area, beckoning Broadwire forward with a little flick of his wrist. “Not every day you get to fistfight with an Autobot.”

Broadwire stared at him for a few more seconds, but apparently Hot Rod had made his offer too appealing to resist. He grinned, and followed Hot Rod. “Let’s do it.”

“Fuck yeah.” Hot Rod bent down, stretching out his leg joints.  _ Primus,  _ he prayed offhandedly,  _ let the virus blockers have finished their work so I don’t end up frozen on a training room floor in the middle of a bunch of Decepticons.  _ “You ready?”

“Ready.” Broadwire shook out his hands. Hot Rod eyed him, taking in his stance and the way he held his fists as he began to clench them, stepping toward Hot Rod with wary purpose. He knew, at least, what he was doing. Nothing special, though-- no claws or anything.

Broadwire lunged first, his fist darting out. Hot Rod ducked, came underneath, and threw two punches, in quick succession, at his exposed abdomen; Broadwire’s arm came down to block them, and Hot Rod retreated, circling his enemy again.

Ah, he was good. At the very least, decent. And just about as fast as Hot Rod. 

“Nice, Autobot,” Broadwire offered. And then he was coming after him again, with a kick, faster than Hot Rod could see coming to dodge, that landed on his thigh, sending him stumbling back. Pain bloomed from the dented area, and Hot Rod gasped. 

For a moment, his vision blurred with the terror, and it was Turmoil in front of him instead. When Broadwire kicked him again, he shielded his face with his arms.

Broadwire stopped. “What are you doing? That’s not good form. If I kill you, I’ll be in big trouble.” He pulled Hot Rod’s arms away from his face. “Look, up like this.” He shook his head, stepping away. “Primus.”

“I’m sorry,” Hot Rod said, trying hard to shake the terror from his mind. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Don’t know how you killed fifteen of the crew fighting like that,” Broadwire said, and put his own hands up.

Hot Rod growled slightly, shaking himself bodily and forcing the thought of Turmoil out of his mind. “Ready?”

“Ready.” 

Hot Rod jumped forward first this time, a right hook striking home at the side of Broadwire’s helm-- the mech grunted and returned a punch to the jaw. They were in close quarters-- no circling, no waiting for the other one to make a move-- it was all strikes and blocks and ducks and heavy vents and grunts of pain as fists hit home. 

Broadwire got a leg free and smashed his knee into Hot Rod’s abdomen, catching him by the shoulders as he gasped and doubled over. Hot Rod floundered for a moment, but caught himself and grabbed ahold of Broadwire’s knee with both hands, set his feet against the ground, and  _ lifted. _

Broadwire yelped as he toppled backwards, hitting the ground with a crash-- Hot Rod leapt after him, landing on top of him and punching him in the face, seeing his head rebound against the ground. Broadwire hissed in pain, struggling to get up.

Hot Rod raised his fist to punch him again, but two hands-- suspiciously familiar-- appeared from behind and grabbed around the back of him, meeting at the front of his chest, and pulled him up bodily, kicking and flailing, off of Broadwire.

_ Deadlock. _

“Let me go!” Hot Rod shouted.

Deadlock snarled and dropped him, barely letting him catch his footing before he reached out and grabbed him by the faring of his collar, dragging him forward. Their eyes met. Deadlock’s face was furious, his field unmistakeable at this close proximity--  _ rage-rage-rage  _ went the sharp little pricks against Hot Rod’s plating.

Broadwire was long gone.

“So, finally caught up, huh?” Hot Rod panted, grinning, his hands coming up to brace themselves on Deadlock’s chestplating to try and pull away.

Deadlock refused to release him. “You little glitch.”

“Let me  _ go!” _

Deadlock threw him forward, sending him stumbling backwards to fall on his aft. He was aware that motion around him had stopped; people were watching.  _ Great.  _ Another public punishment. What would Deadlock do? Take out one of those guns and kneecap Hot Rod? 

“Why the  _ fuck  _ would you try and escape?” Deadlock demanded. 

Hot Rod sputtered out a laugh.  _ “Why?” _

“You--” Deadlock hesitated, looking around. He must have noticed their audience, as well. Striding forward, he grabbed Hot Rod off the ground, shoved him forward, and pulled him out of the training room, one hand clenched on his spoiler.

“Fucking bastard,” Hot Rod growled, trying to wrench free as soon as they got out of the training room and into a more private hallway. “Just get it over with, huh?”

Deadlock didn’t seem to hear him. “Do you know what Turmoil would do to me if he saw you running around by yourself?”

“Wh--” Hot Rod said, but Deadlock was already shoving him back into the wall. 

“I shouldn’t expect you to care about that, but maybe you’ll care if I take your aft to the bridge and tell Turmoil about your little escape attempt, huh?!” Deadlock was angry, Hot Rod could tell, but there was something underneath the anger that danced just beyond the reach of Hot Rod’s understanding. 

As per usual, he refused to give Deadlock the satisfaction of knowing he was confusing Hot Rod. “Oh, and you don’t think I’m used to that by now?”

“Don’t lie to me. We both know Turmoil never lets up when he’s angry.” 

Hot Rod faltered. “Fine. You don’t think I can take it?”

Deadlock scoffed, and looked him up and down. “If you think you  _ want  _ to take it. . .”

Hot Rod shoved him away. “I hate you.”

“Oh, now we’re getting somewhere,” Deadlock sneered. “Look, Autobot, you do  _ not  _ fucking run off. Do you understand that?”

“I  _ hate  _ you,” Hot Rod repeated. 

“Answer the goddamn question.”

_ “No,”  _ Hot Rod said spitefully.

Deadlock shoved him again. Hot Rod shoved back, had the satisfaction of watching Deadlock’s face contort in rage and feel the attack of his field before a gun barrel pressed snug against his neck.

He pushed against it. “Do it, Decepticon.”

Deadlock shoved at him harder, making an angry noise. They both knew he couldn’t. It had most likely been a gut reaction more than any wish to actually kill Hot Rod.

Hot Rod watched him holster his gun silently.

“Fucking cooperate, then,” Deadlock said, obviously attempting to save face. “Look, level with me, Autobot. Did you run off because you were bored?”

Hot Rod flicked his spoiler. “Yes.”

“I can--” Deadlock rolled his eyes forcefully, looking up at the ceiling for good measure. “I can take you here on your off days. If that’ll keep you  _ happy.” _

Hot Rod sighed. “Fine. Promise?”

Deadlock gritted his teeth. “Yeah. Sure, whatever.”

“Shake on it, Decepticon.” Hot Rod held out his hand.

A quick glance to the right and left from Deadlock, and Hot Rod’s hand was being grasped in a rough shake. 

“Thanks,” Hot Rod said.

Deadlock threw his hand down and muttered, “Unbelievable. Not only is he not in the brig, but I have to keep him fucking occupied, too.”

“You might find that you actually like me, you know,” Hot Rod offered, trying to muster up his regular attitude. 

“That’ll be the day I die, Autobot,” Deadlock said. “We are going back to my quarters.”

“But you said--”

“You’ve had enough playtime for today.”

Hot Rod rolled his eyes. “Okay, you have to admit I got pretty far, huh?”

“Come on,” Deadlock growled, and stalked off.

  
  


.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments always appreciated :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter:
> 
> This is the first time the referenced torture is seen "onscreen." It's brief, but there's a graphic moment.

“Here,” Deadlock said, and handed Hot Rod a cube of fuel. “To  _ keep up your strength.” _

Hot Rod smiled sweetly as he took it, as if he hadn’t been complaining the entire walk to the mess hall about how he  _ needed  _ to get fuel to keep up his strength, it wasn’t his  _ fault, Deadlock,  _ that he ran hot and had to refuel more often than Deadlock did! “Aw. Thanks.”

Deadlock sat down next to him. There were other mecha in the mess hall; he glared around the room once or twice, and had to remind himself that it didn’t matter, really, if they looked at him. Not at this point. It was pretty much an accepted part of life onboard the ship, that Deadlock and Hot Rod went everywhere together. After the incident in the training room, Deadlock had spent the next two weeks taking Hot Rod out and about, as much as he had hated it to begin with.

Now? Well, it wasn’t all that bad.

Hot Rod was-- there were worse people to babysit.

“Are you going to fuel?” Hot Rod asked, nodding in Deadlock’s direction. 

“Nah.” Deadlock shrugged, resting his forearms on the table and watching Hot Rod drink his energon-- he drank it  _ fast,  _ like he was expecting it to be taken away. “I have to check in with Turmoil every time I fuel. It’s a stupid rule, but he doesn’t want me too charged up in case he has to try and take me out.” He rolled his eyes. “Course, I could beat him even at 10% fuel. He doesn’t know that, but I could.”

“Really?” Hot Rod asked, seemingly amused. His tone wasn’t mocking, though, so Deadlock nodded.

“I’m used to it. To be honest, I’m on about 65% fuel levels at all times nowadays, but it’s more than I was used to operating on before I joined up.” He thumped his chest, displaying his Deceptibrand. “Used to be I could fight off three Enforcers at a time without a gun on 20% fuel level.”

He grinned proudly at Hot Rod. Hot Rod grinned back.

“Hey, another street kid, huh?” he said, and gave a little salute. “Did you use to drive around the streets just to keep your core systems hot?”

Deadlock nodded, surprised. “You too?”

“Yep,” Hot Rod said, punctuating the  _ p  _ a little too hard. “Drained the hell out of your fuel but it’d keep you alive, am I right?”

“You got it.” Deadlock squinted at Hot Rod. “What city were you. . .?”

“I should tell you something funny,” Hot Rod said, quickly, speaking over Deadlock’s question as if he hadn’t even heard him begin it. “When I was in the Autobots, I was assigned a position under  _ Prowl  _ for a few years.” He made a meaningful face at Deadlock. 

Deadlock barked out a laugh. “Is that the entire story?”

“No, when I had to report to him one time, he was fueling, right? And I was just off a really bad mission, like my squadmates were idiots, the whole deal. And we lost some kind of important package or something. Anyway, Prowl’s sitting there with a  _ gigantic  _ glass of engex and he’s guzzling that thing like it’s the only thing going to keep him awake for the next hour, which, like, it probably was.” Hot Rod laughed. “That’s some classified information I’ll share with you, huh? Prowl doesn’t fuel properly, just-- engex by the bottle. Shitty stuff, too.” 

“Sounds about right,” Deadlock said. “Hey, if you’re done, let’s go on back to the training room. You can finish your story as we go.”

“Yeah, let’s go,” Hot Rod said, standing and stretching his arms above his head. “I’m looking forward to that shooting lesson, hm?”  
“You know you’re not getting that.”

“Aw, come on.” Hot Rod patted Deadlock’s arm as he turned to go, smiling up at him. “If you’re such a big scary Decepticon, you should be able to stop me if I get a little triggerhappy.”

_ “No,”  _ Deadlock growled, putting a little of the old intimidation back into his voice. Hot Rod didn’t seem to notice. 

“Okay, so Prowl’s right in the middle of drinking his nasty-ass engex, and he doesn’t know I lost his macguffin yet.” Hot Rod started walking toward the hallway. He stopped by the door, waiting for Deadlock to reach him. “I do a bit of bowing and scraping, he yells at me for fucking up the mission, tells me I’m not worth the fuel it takes to keep me going, the whole bit.”

Deadlock reached over Hot Rod’s head to open the door. He rested his forearm on the wall instead, waiting for Hot Rod to finish. “Oh, really?”

“And then I tell him,” Hot Rod says, his voice quietly delighted, “and he has a fucking  _ energon backup  _ and-- I kid you not-- the engex comes spluttering out through  _ all  _ his transformation seams.” He laughed out loud. “He was so distracted it gave me a chance to get away.”

Deadlock stifled a chuckle. “I imagine that must have taken a while to get out.”

“Oh, it  _ did,”  _ Hot Rod said. “He was in his office for two days straight cleaning it all.”

“Maybe I should take some tactics from you,” Deadlock mused.

“Please, you’ll never be on my level,” Hot Rod said, turning back to grin up at him as he leaned backwards against the closed door. He splayed his hands out confidently. “I’m the king of--”

The door behind him opened, and Turmoil was there.

“Oh, good timing,” he said, grabbed Hot Rod around one arm and dragged him through the door.

Deadlock shattered.

He registered Turmoil’s presence, saw Hot Rod’s face melt into sheer terror, was close enough to feel the freezing drop of his field into fear.

His hands went to his guns. They were halfway out of his subspace pockets before he realized what he was doing.

Turmoil glanced down at his hands on his guns, and back up again.

“Did I startle you?” he asked, tilting his head. Deadlock came back to reality with a hard shock, heard the faint  _ click  _ of Turmoil’s cannon priming.

“No,” he gritted out.

He put his guns back.

“Good.” Turmoil nodded. “You’re excused from duty for a while, Deadlock. Do what you like. I’ll comm you when I’m finished with him.”

Hot Rod’s spoiler clung tight to his back and his feet dragged against the ground as Turmoil pulled him away.

Deadlock walked to the training room alone.

He should be happy about this, he thought. He was finally freed from his duties, for a while anyway, and he was getting to be alone.

Yeah. He should be happy.

He would practice shooting, he decided.

“Set me up for a sim,” he growled at the crew member on duty. 

She glanced at him sideways, but nodded.

Deadlock stalked into the sim room and pulled out his guns. The tips of each rested on his thighs.

The first holo-enemy flickered into existence. Deadlock shot it in a single motion, registered the heat of the gun in his hand as it auto-reloaded, turned and shot the second enemy, and felt himself begin to be lost to the battle.

His arms became reactions, his fingers tuned to the auto-reload, the guns extensions of himself. Each enemy fell with a blast-hole in the brain area, the one-shot kill he’d spent millions of years perfecting. His face was set in a snarl, and he barely registered it;  _ shoot, wait the half-second for reload, and shoot again.  _

He reduced himself down to the need to kill and the need to stay alive and that was enough. 

But eventually he ran out of enemies and the sim wound down.

He pulled himself out of the doorway. He didn’t feel any better, and he didn’t know why. He should be enjoying himself. 

“Deadlock, what happened to your little red shadow?” the crew member asked, cocking her head as he stomped out of the sim room.

“I’m sure he’s getting the red stripped out of him right now,” Deadlock said meanly, and walked away.

He wasn’t upset. 

He wasn’t worried or upset or angry or  _ anything.  _ He should take advantage of this free time to do something else he liked.

God, what else did he like to do?

It was all blurred in his head. He didn’t know. All he could think about was the look on Hot Rod’s face as Turmoil pulled him away, the immediate instinct to reach for his guns and defend what was his. 

He headed back to his rooms.

What was Turmoil doing right now? What would he decide to break? What would Hot Rod look like when Deadlock came back? It wasn’t that Deadlock. . .  _ cared,  _ but. . . he cared a little bit, and it was eating at him, not knowing. Not being able to do anything. Which was  _ stupid,  _ because he shouldn’t  _ want  _ to do anything, because the entire reason Hot Rod was here was to be a glorified punching bag and he’d  _ known  _ this.

Deadlock reached the door of his quarters. He’d gotten here surprisingly fast, and he knew that he must have drawn attention, storming through the hallways. He didn’t care. For once, he wished that someone else would come up and talk to him. He wanted someone else to ask about Hot Rod, just so he could say something else nasty, pretend like he didn’t care.

No-- he didn’t want to think about Hot Rod at  _ all. _

Wasn’t that what he’d been wanting ever since he started this job? To get away? To be able to have a free moment without thinking about his “little red shadow?”

He would do something that didn’t require him to think about Hot Rod. Like. . . talk. To someone. One of the crew. He could do that. There were always people at their stations this time of the day-- he’d just go up to them and have a conversation about normal things. No conversations about  _ classified information  _ or how one of them could totally beat the other one in a race or about the best way to make rust sticks without your commander finding out. Just. . . a normal conversation.

It occurred to Deadlock that he had been pacing outside of his door for the entire time he’d deliberated. He stopped.

He walked a few feet down the hall and paused at the first station he came to.

“Broadwire,” he said firmly.

Broadwire looked up at him and startled.

“How--” Deadlock put his hands on his hips and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “How is your shift going?”

Broadwire squinted at him. Helpless, Deadlock rebooted his vocoder and waited for the answer.

“It’s going fine, Deadlock,” Broadwire said slowly.

“Good.” Deadlock nodded. “That’s good.”

“Yeah,” Broadwire agreed. He glanced behind Deadlock. “Hey, where’s. . .”

“I hope you’re not playing on the vidscreen instead of doing your work,” Deadlock interrupted. 

“I’m not!”

“Don’t think I forgot about that.”

“No, Deadlock, of course not.” Broadwire stopped trying to look behind him and turned back to his screen, shaking his head. “Sorry.”

Deadlock nodded and turned on his heel to go back to his quarters.

Well, that had been fucking stupid. And he was thinking about Hot Rod again.

He snarled and kicked the door.

Why was he still thinking about Hot Rod?!

His comm crackled to life. 

“Deadlock,” came Turmoil’s voice through the speaker, undiminished even through its scratched quality, “you may pick Hot Rod up.”

Deadlock stared down at it. 

“Understood,” he snapped, and began to make his way down to Turmoil’s quarters.

Deadlock stepped into the room.

“Welcome back,” Turmoil grunted, holding Hot Rod up in the air with one arm, his hand clenched around the mech’s throat. Hot Rod was struggling weakly to push away from him. “Sit down, I’ll be done in a minute.”

Deadlock seethed. He did not sit.

Hot Rod was in bad shape, he noted against his will. His red-gold frame was bloody and dented, his face was near unrecognizable, and the far points of his spoiler were both broken off jaggedly. He vented roughly, loud enough to be heard all the way across the room.

Deadlock folded his arms.

Turmoil shook Hot Rod a little, seeming amused. Hot Rod’s legs swang, dead weight. “This has been fun, Autobot. But before I let you go-- I heard you had a little adventure a few weeks ago.”

Deadlock blinked, suddenly afraid. Did Turmoil  _ know?  _ Of course he would know. Someone had told him. He’d been foolish to think that he could get away with Turmoil not knowing.

Hot Rod didn’t answer him. He looked very small, smaller than normal-- Turmoil made  _ Deadlock  _ feel small, compared to him, and Hot Rod only came up to Deadlock’s chest. In Turmoil’s hands, he-- he seemed fragile, breakable. 

But he didn’t answer Turmoil, and Deadlock was-- well, he wasn’t surprised, but some part of him had been expecting a smirking, teasing answer, some back-talk, or a grin combined with cutting words. 

Hot Rod was silent, and venting hard.

“I hope you know not to repeat what you tried before,” Turmoil rumbled. “Especially if your bodyguard is so  _ incompetent  _ that he lets you run around alone.”

Deadlock very carefully refused to respond. Even standing across the room as he was, he knew Turmoil could see him, could catalogue his facial expressions. 

Turmoil said, “I’ll make sure you remember what’ll happen to you if you do try again.”

Deadlock watched, unable to look away, as Turmoil took hold of one of Hot Rod’s dangling legs and pulled it up so that the mech was horizontal to the ground. Hot Rod still struggled, but Turmoil stretched his body out between his two arms relentlessly, unperturbed.

And then with a grunt and a swift movement, Turmoil broke Hot Rod’s leg over his knee.

Hot Rod screamed.

Deadlock’s hands clenched.

“Autobot scum,” Turmoil said, tossing Hot Rod aside. “Come get him, Deadlock. Be thankful I don’t do the same to you for letting him go.”

Deadlock stalked to the front of the room, his plating bristling. He knelt down next to Hot Rod. The mech was curled on the floor, clutching his snapped thigh strut and gasping out sounds of agony.

Turmoil was already leaving the room, shaking blood off of his hands absentmindedly.

Deadlock felt his struts melt in relief as the door shut behind his commander. He refused to look into the source of that relief, because he had  _ not  _ been afraid, at all, of what Turmoil would decide to do to him for his slip. He could have fought off his commander. He had his guns.

“Hot Rod,” he said gruffly.

The mech’s optics were blazing and overbright-- he had to be nearly sightless with the pain. Deadlock reached out and laid a hand tentatively on his shoulder.

Hot Rod didn’t flinch away. Instead, he reached out blindly and grabbed at Deadlock’s hand. His vocoder had stopped making noises, instead spitting a steady stream of static.

Deadlock sighed.

“Okay. Come here,” he said, and slid a hand underneath Hot Rod’s shoulders, pulling him somewhat upright and closer to Deadlock. Hot Rod fell against him. His face pressed against Deadlock’s thigh. 

A moment later, streaks of cleanser ran down the plating as Hot Rod’s shoulders trembled and shook and his hand grabbed harder and harder at Deadlock’s.

Deadlock stared down at him.

His other hand, traitorously, lifted on its own and landed, cautious and faint, on the back of Hot Rod’s helm.

While his hand was doing. . . whatever it was doing, Deadlock had no power over it, the rest of him took a look at Hot Rod’s broken leg. 

It was bad.

It hadn’t snapped off; the plating was bent and nearly split where it had been broken, but the leg was still attached to the rest of Hot Rod’s frame. The blood, though-- he’d lose fuel too fast with the way it was leaking. 

Oh, and it was obviously hurting him a lot.

That-- that wasn’t good either.

“Hot Rod,” he said, “I’m-- I’m going to pick you up now.”

Hot Rod either didn’t hear him or didn’t care to answer. 

Carefully, Deadlock got an arm more firmly underneath Hot Rod’s upper back and took his hand off of Hot Rod’s head in order to hold his legs. He stood. 

“P-please,” Hot Rod managed, and turned his face toward Deadlock’s chest, shaking. His hands curled around himself. He didn’t finish whatever he had been going to say.

“Hold on,” Deadlock said roughly. “Try and stay online. Dead weight is harder to carry.” He turned and began to walk out of the room, swiftly and more urgently than he’d like to admit, and headed toward the medibay.

God fucking help anyone who tried to stop him this time.

Barrage was on shift, so Deadlock had been given permission to sit outside of the medibay during Hot Rod’s repairs. He’d never been more relieved.

For one thing, it allowed him to think about why he’d been so upset--  _ not  _ upset, he  _ hadn’t  _ been upset-- when he’d seen what Turmoil was doing to Hot Rod. Why he’d instinctively tried to stop Turmoil from taking him. Why he’d put his hand on Hot Rod’s helm and let him cry into his plating and carried him to the medibay as fast as he could. 

Why he was so _ angry. _

He wasn’t scared of Turmoil. But--

Something in him rebelled against seeing the same thing done to Hot Rod that Turmoil had done to him, not too long ago. It was stupid and didn’t make sense, it bordered on  _ traitorous  _ to feel sympathy for an Autobot. But he could still feel that sense of anger he’d felt course through him, sudden and unexpected, when Turmoil had taken Hot Rod.

The sudden, sweeping instinct to fight back. 

Logically, he told himself, it made sense. He hated Turmoil for beating him and constantly trying to put him in his place, and he hated that Turmoil was able to keep him so thoroughly in check with just the threat of violence. It would make sense that in that moment, when Hot Rod had been laughing with him, all bright eyes and easy humor, that Deadlock would be startled, angry even, when Turmoil came to snatch that away.

But none of that explained his hand on Hot Rod’s helm or the worry he’d felt, carrying Hot Rod to be repaired.

Well-- fuck explaining it. All Deadlock needed to know was that he’d somehow developed some sort of-- ugh--  _ not  _ affection, but something on the opposite end of dislike for the Autobot, and he needed to stop with that shit right away.

Because if he started  _ feeling  _ things, he’d never get back to Decepticon High Command. Imagine if Megatron came back to check up on him and saw him-- saw him--

Deadlock put his head in his hands.

Primus.

This was a mess.

It was all fucking Turmoil’s fault.

If he’d just killed Hot Rod when he first captured him,  _ none  _ of this would be happening right now. Deadlock would be living his normal life aboard the ship-- stepping carefully around Turmoil’s bad tempers, holed up in his rooms, asking permission to fuel and to dock and to enter doorways, escaping whenever he could to take long, lonely missions out among the stars because it was better than what he had here. No Hot Rod. No Hot Rod’s smile, his joking, his flippant attitude and the way he threw insults back at Deadlock’s anger like it was a game. No Hot Rod sleeping in the berth next to his own, no more cant of Hot Rod’s spoiler and the heat of his plating against Deadlock’s in those moments that they brushed--

Deadlock groaned.

It must be some kind of horrible Autobot secret mission. Infiltrate Decepticon ships and infect their SICs with-- whatever this was.

Or maybe he was still considered important enough to Autobot Command that they had sent Hot Rod, specifically, to target him. Maybe Hot Rod was supposed to get close enough to him that he could. . . could. . . get a coding virus in him, or something.

If he was, Deadlock mused, he was extremely dedicated to his undercover position.

The memory of Hot Rod’s leg strut snapping flashed through Deadlock’s mind again. His memory files were unrelentingly clear on the sight of the limb breaking, the plating bending and splitting, energon spilling and spilling on the ground, leaking down Deadlock’s body as he carried him--

For Primus fucking  _ sake. _

This was ridiculous.

Deadlock considered for a while longer, sitting with his head in his hands.

It wasn’t treason to feel pity for an Autobot, he supposed. Not really. Not unless you were a part of the DJD, which he’d decided long ago was not for him. 

But that was  _ not  _ what he was thinking about.

Hot Rod was  _ his  _ prisoner. That was it. Even if Turmoil had captured him, Deadlock should be in charge of this ship anyway, which made Hot Rod his. 

One day, Deadlock would take command away from Turmoil, start winning battles and get into Megatron’s favor again, and everything would be fine. That’s all it would take. 

Until then. . . 

Well, until then, he just had to deal with all of this.

It hit him like a bolt of lightning, a sudden shot of realization so delicious he wished he could save the feeling, bottle it up and use it on those rainy days when he found himself missing the quick hit of the boosters. Turmoil would be  _ extremely _ upset to know that Deadlock was starting to not constantly suffer in his position of “guarding the Autobot.” Turmoil would be  _ disappointed  _ that his carefully selected punishment was going awry because Deadlock liked Hot Rod. 

Turmoil, he knew, would be downright  _ angry. _

Deadlock smiled slowly.

Well.

When you put it that way, he guessed, there really wasn’t any reason at all to feel guilty that he didn’t hate Hot Rod. There wasn’t any reason to feel guilty that he was angry at Turmoil. It wasn’t treason. It wouldn’t be treason.

Just another thing to add to the list of why Turmoil had to go.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somebody rlly do be having (gasp) feelings


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 👉👈
> 
> Hi everybody..... 
> 
> I know this took three months and im sowwy
> 
> hopefully i'll be able to start back up with a more regular pace soon tho!! pls enjoy this transition chapter into the second half of the fic 👁️
> 
> ALSO. content warning! This chapter is centered around transformers-esque mind fuckery, including stealing memory files and brain hacking. The chapter also features some suicidal thoughts and ideation that happen later in the chapter. Be warned and read with care! <3

Hot Rod was beginning to regret his insistence on walking to the lab.

It wasn’t that Actinus and Barrage hadn’t done a fantastic job reattaching his  _ broken leg strut _ and patching him up. They had. They’d done a great job with the mangled, warped mess they’d been handed and he was  _ grateful  _ (which, he guessed, also said something about how bad his situation was). But he still hurt. 

A lot.

It had made Hot Rod feel really great at the time, refusing Deadlock’s offer to carry him in favor of walking, like he was stronger than they expected— like he was still eking out some modicum of control in his situation. Hot Rod had marched with stubborn purpose to Manibus' lab, pretending all the while that every step on his newly-repaired leg wasn’t sending shockwaves of pain rocketing across his systems. He’d swept into the lab with an authority he didn’t feel, laid himself out on the table, folded his arms, and waited.

Deadlock had followed him inside a few seconds later and taken his usual perch by the door . Hot Rod saw his optics dim; he was probably cleaning out his processor or something. Not that Hot Rod cared. Deadlock could honestly go fuck himself and take Hot Rod’s plans to escape with him. After the ordeal yesterday, well-- Hot Rod was feeling, maybe, just a bit upset. More than usual. He’d let himself get complacent, let himself forget that he was here on this ship to be  _ tortured,  _ and he’d-- he’d let himself think, for the better half of a second when it had  _ finally happened _ , that Deadlock was going to  _ save  _ him. Which was  _ stupid. _

He knew that Deadlock didn’t care what happened to him. He shouldn’t have let himself expect anything different, no matter how much they’d been, well. . .  _ tolerating  _ each other. Deadlock was a Decepticon. Hot Rod was his Autobot prisoner. Why had it been so easy to forget that?

When it came to it-- when Turmoil had dragged him away down familiar halls into familiar doorways and began a ritual of familiar pain-- Deadlock hadn’t cared. And Hot Rod should have  _ known _ he wouldn’t.

He had to pick back up with his plan of “Get Deadlock To Like You” soon. But right now, he couldn’t bring himself to even consider it.

The walk had _ not  _ done his leg any favors, and he was beginning to realize that he probably should have taken Deadlock up on his offer, as humiliating as it would have been. A whole evil, Decepticon ship and no one had thought to stock a pair of stabilizers? 

Hot Rod glared up at the ceiling with nothing else to focus on but the throbbing in his thigh strut.  _ Great. _

_ “Welcome  _ back,” came Manibus’ voice, from somewhere across the room. 

Hot Rod set his jaw, refusing to let the scientist see him tremble. 

“We’ll just pick up where we left off, hm?” the mech offered, optics gleaming as he swept into view. His two additional arms lifted off from where they had been folded against his back and hovered over Hot Rod, twitching hungrily while his primary arms worked to secure Hot Rod to the slab. Long, unnatural fingers skittered across Hot Rod’s face and neck almost casually. 

Manibus’ first order of business was to get a suppressor affixed to the side of Hot Rod’s helm, interrupting his optical feed; with a fizzle and a  _ pop,  _ Hot Rod’s vision went black. Then the fingers were back, probing every inch of his frame in search of an available panel.

“This one?” Manibus murmured to himself, tapping the underside of Hot Rod’s jaw with the tip of a finger. “No, no, too delicate. Wouldn’t hold. Chest panel, perhaps? Or the arm?”

“You can’t use the arm,” Deadlock interrupted from across the room. He sounded pissed, but that was practically his default nowadays. “Actinus is using it for his energon transfusion and he can’t have circuit damage.”

“Always ruining my plans,” Manibus muttered. “All right, neck it is.”

A thrum of horror blossomed inside Hot Rod’s spark, sending waves of anxious adrenaline coursing through his frame. Manibus’ long fingers clasped the side of Hot Rod’s jaw, holding him steady; Hot Rod refused access to the port, as usual, but Manibus took an electric prod to it, as usual, and the panel popped involuntarily. Hot Rod shuddered as he felt the port’s entrance welcome the alien plug .

_ This time,  _ he promised himself, desperate, feeling the intrusion begin,  _ this time I’ll stop it. This time he won’t get in. _

The firewalls that protected his most important memory files were weakening. Manibus had been at them for weeks now, abandoning his original objective of controlled-movement code to make repeated attacks on Hot Rod’s processor. Hot Rod liked to think that he could withstand the mental onslaught, but he couldn't deny that Manibus got a little further, broke him down a little more, every time laid himself out on the scientist’s table. Each visit left him feeling exposed. Like he was on display for Manibus. To  _ look  _ at. To  _ comment  _ on. To  _ peruse.  _

He refocused his attention on the invasive crawl of foreign code trespassing through his neural net; his firewalls quavered with each casual attack against them. Hot Rod knew that if he had his optics online, he would see nothing but bland focus on Manibus’ face. 

This wasn’t an aggressive mind-break. Hot Rod could have handled an aggressive one. He’d been trained for that, at least. But the slow progression of it-- the way deeper and more personal memory files were extracted, one after the other, from the growing cracks in his encryptions-- the way he couldn’t stop it, couldn’t  _ fix  _ the growing fractures in his defenses without a medic to get in his coding and repair the damage-- meant Manibus was breaking him down. Meant that Hot Rod was  _ losing.  _

Today, who knew what Manibus would take?

The port on his neck panel warmed with the heat of the process that Manibus had underway; Hot Rod shivered and clenched his fists again, wishing they were free to rip it out. 

He wished. . . he wished. . .

But it wasn’t the time for wishing. Wishing was useless here.

Hot Rod’s firewalls seized and sent warnings to his HUD, alerting him that they were beginning to fail. 

| **Memory files are in danger of being lost|** cautioned a sliding banner of red text across his blackened vision. 

Hot Rod diverted half of his processor power toward the efforts his firewalls were making-- normally, he’d try and save his energy for later in the fight, but by now. . . by now, he knew it was pretty much useless. Now, it was just about making it difficult for Manibus.

The first firewall bolstered and repelled the attack, the reinforced encryption successful. But he had only so many firewalls, and there were too many memory files to protect.

Undeterred, Manibus’ probe passed immediately to another section of firewall, somehow detecting that this one had less encryption; Hot Rod, frantic, attempted to unravel and redirect the layers of encryption he’d put on the first wall. He was too slow. He’d built it up too strong. Manibus broke through.

| **File: 200.k.14-25-15-14.mf compromised|** his HUD warned.

Hot Rod felt a pit of terror open in his tanks, threatening to suck his very spark away. “No--!” he managed, desperate, but the file was already cracked, opened, the connection finalized. He heard a pleased hum from Manibus as he presumably downloaded the file to his monitor.

“Thank you for your participation,” Manibus said. There was a  _ click,  _ and Hot Rod’s optical feed came back on; he whipped his head around to stare at the monitor next to the table. 

Because as always, Manibus was about to play out the data of the memory file in front of him, take notes and comment and save it away in case it was useful. But not this one-- not  _ this  _ one, he couldn’t. He couldn’t. Hot Rod wouldn’t let him.

Behind him, Deadlock shifted. 

“Don’t,” Hot Rod choked out.

Manibus paid him no mind, too busy adjusting the monitor and fiddling with the plug running from Hot Rod’s neck port to the side of the screen. Hot Rod fought against his restraints.

_ “Don’t!”  _ he screamed, as the screen hummed to life. “You  _ bastard!” _

_ “Please  _ be quiet,” Manibus said irritably, one of his hands reaching around to fiddle with Hot Rod’s neck again; Hot Rod stiffened as long fingers extended to slip under his outer armor and fit into the internal components of his throat. His vocoder crackled and powered down as Manibus disengaged some of the main power lines.

“Thank you,” Manibus said absently, and started the file.

Hot Rod thrashed against his bonds, unable to block out the sound coming from the monitor, refused to look, refused to acknowledge the all-too-familiar voices and sounds, the  _ whoosh  _ of roaring flames and the cruel metallic shriek of collapsed buildings — all harmonizing perfectly into a deafening melody of anguish and destruction, the screams of his people a sickening chorus in the background. 

He was aware, faintly, of Deadlock sitting forward in his seat.

“So,” Manibus said, fascinated,  _ “Nyon.” _

  
  


Manibus spent a long time going over the stolen file, clearly concentrating on Orion Pax— taking particular interest in the things he’d said and done. 

Hot Rod had stopped fighting his restraints a while ago and fallen still on the slab. He stared up at the ceiling, feeling empty. Optic cleanser had tracked down the sides of his face and puddled in his audials. 

_ What was the point? _

Hot Rod didn’t know. He  _ really _ didn’t know. Why was he still here, going along with all of this? He should have just done the honorable and noble thing and sacrificed himself with some kind of big display when he got captured. Well,  _ instead  _ of getting captured. He should have been like Optimus Prime. 

He still could.

If his life was just going to be like this now, what was stopping him from just-- just transforming when he left the lab today and activating the mouth flower? They’d done the hard work for him. His part would be quick and easy. And he’d die in his alt mode, which he was seriously starting to miss by now.

Not like he’d really be missed. Not by anyone.

“Are you done?” Deadlock asked, startling Hot Rod out of his thoughts.

“Hm?” Manibus said absentmindedly. “Yes, just a moment. I need to save more of this data.”

“Can you at least turn his vocoder back on? You’re gonna forget to do it when you finally kick us out, and  _ I  _ don’t know how to get it back on.” Deadlock folded his arms, scowling at Manibus. 

“Just a  _ moment,”  _ Manibus said, annoyed.

“Use  _ one  _ of your goddamn hands!” 

_ “Fine!”  _ Manibus snapped, wheeling around. “What, aren’t you enjoying the peace and quiet?”

“Yeah, but if I have to take him to Actinus one more time this week I’m going to lose my mind.” Deadlock sat back against his seat. “Just fuckin’ do it.”

Manibus gave Deadlock one hell of a dirty look, but Hot Rod felt the familiar touch of his spidery fingers against his throat, fiddling around with the mechanisms. With a hum, his vocoder powered back on. 

He gave Deadlock a sideways glance. Sure, he wasn’t exactly in the mood to  _ use  _ his vocoder right now, but he appreciated the return to personhood. Not just a bank of memories inside a metal shell fastened to a slab to be poked and hacked and examined.

“You’re gonna let me carry you back,” Deadlock told him, glaring off to the side. “I saw that limp. You’re going to compound that fracture and it’s not gonna be  _ my  _ fault if you do.”

Hot Rod rested his head back against the table and shrugged.

He could still hear bits of his memory playing. Thankfully, Manibus was more interested in Orion Pax than the actual moment that Nyon blew. Hot Rod knew he couldn’t have borne it if Manibus had replayed it more than once. The shame of it, out on display for Deadlock to see. For-- for them  _ both _ to see.

Deadlock’s intervention had shaken Hot Rod from his moment of despair, anyway. That was good, even if Deadlock definitely hadn’t meant to. He ran his tongue softly over the circular piece of metal soldered to the roof of his mouth, feeling the shape of it. He imagined how it would feel activated, drilling through his mouth into his brain. He wondered how long it would take to die. Would it be instant?

He knew, if he was honest, that he wouldn’t have gone through with it. He was no Optimus Prime.

His life, somehow, still meant something to him. Was that selfish?

_ “Alright _ , the data’s saved,” Manibus said irritably. He must have been conscious of Deadlock shifting in his seat, hands resting near his guns (and Hot Rod knew that his hands just went to his subspace pockets when he was nervous, so really Manibus should know that he had the power here because Deadlock was scared-- but  _ Manibus _ didn’t spend every waking  _ and  _ sleeping hour with Deadlock, so all he saw was the hands and the promise of guns in them). 

“Great,” Deadlock said flatly.

“Go ahead and take him.” Manibus waved a dismissive hand at the table and absentmindedly plucked the cord from Hot Rod’s neck port.

Hot Rod stared off into the distance as Deadlock approached him and unshackled his limbs. Deadlock didn’t meet his eyes, focusing on his task with that perpetual scowl.

Hot Rod had to wonder what Deadlock was thinking after seeing the file. Was he impressed, like Megatron had been so long ago? Was he disgusted? Horrified? 

It didn’t matter what Deadlock thought of him. But. . . just a little, it mattered. 

“Sit up.” 

Hot Rod pushed himself up. Wincing, he felt for the open port on his neck and slid it closed. His processor ached. There was a stinging pain at the surface of his neck that was spreading into a deeper, hotter hurt throughout the circuitry beneath. For once, all he wanted to do was go back to the hab and sleep for hours.

“You’re going to go rest,” Deadlock told him, as if he’d read Hot Rod’s mind. 

Hot Rod nodded. His optics wanted to power down; he kept having to reboot the hardware keeping them online.

Deadlock rolled his shoulders and sighed. “All right. Ready?”

Hot Rod heard the  _ hiss  _ of hydraulics as Deadlock apparently rerouted some power to his arms and shoulders; even though Hot Rod was significantly shorter, knowing that it wasn’t a simple feat for Deadlock to carry him around like a sparkling made it just a little more bearable.

Hot Rod acquiesced to the unspoken order as grudgingly as he could manage; having Deadlock carry him back was sounding more appealing by the second. He wrapped his arms around Deadlock’s neck and stifled a grunt of pain as the mech scooped his legs in the crook of his elbow.

Hot Rod felt his head fall against Deadlock’s chest. He was too tired to move it back, and he didn’t mind it being there anyway, really.

Deadlock put him down on the berth.

“You  _ better  _ recharge now,” he threatened, connecting the energon drip that Actinus had set up in the hab to the inside of Hot Rod’s arm. “If I see you off the berth in anything under six hours, I’m breaking that fucking leg again myself.” He turned away, hands jerking up to rest on his hips momentarily before he put them down again. 

“Deadlock?” Hot Rod said, breaking his silence. “. . .Thanks.”

Deadlock looked at him out of the corner of his optic. He looked trapped, as if Hot Rod had just offered him a primed bomb. The mechanisms of his face twitched minutely, and he folded his arms again. “Sure.”

Hot Rod turned to face the ceiling. He hurt all over and he needed some decent recharge and self-repair.

There was a moment of silence.

“The memory file,” Deadlock said.

Hot Rod looked at Deadlock sharply, a pit of dread growing in his tanks. Deadlock returned his gaze, his expression unreadable. 

“I understand,” Deadlock said quietly.

Hot Rod stared at him. 

“Now fucking sleep,” Deadlock snarled, and turned to walk away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things will get worse before they get better but they WILL get better i swear
> 
> comments are always appreciated!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout out to me for only having a month-long gap in between these instead of a three-month long one woohoo
> 
> also its my birthday!!!

Deadlock couldn’t sleep.

Hot Rod, on the other hand, was sleeping just fine. Deadlock had certainly looked over at him enough to prove it. Every time Deadlock lifted his head from the slab, slagged off from the lack of sleep and half-hoping Hot Rod would be getting up and sneaking around so that he’d have an excuse to get angry, he saw exactly what he had the last time: Hot Rod lying there, his biolights dimmed and his optics offline, recharging quietly. 

So why couldn’t Deadlock sleep?

He was tired. He _ needed _ to recharge. But every time he tried to implement a sleep subroutine, it refused to hold, only succeeding in taunting him with a taste of rest before fading off into infuriating nothingness and disappearing for what felt like ages. Rinse and repeat.

Deadlock sighed, staring at the ceiling.

Maybe he was still shaken from watching the memory file Manibus had played out in front of him in the lab. It had been. . . well, it hadn’t been anything close to what he’d  _ expected  _ to see when Hot Rod had started fighting his restraints. He’d been interested, no matter how much Manibus and his methods unsettled him, at the idea of seeing some enormous military secret that Hot Rod was so desperate to hide. 

And it had turned out to be, well. Not that.

Very much not that.

Nyon had been. . . Primus.  __ So long ago. Deadlock dug around in his memory files for a moment, trying to catalogue the date. The back of his mind was hazy from lack of recharge, and his files were as untouched as they could be without losing control of his day-to-day functionality; he didn’t like poking around back there. The past wasn’t usually pleasant to return to, and even when it was, it was distracting from the present. He kept a ruthless cull of his memory files, categorizing them into “necessary” and “unnecessary,” and for the longest time, anything further back than the first day he’d taken command of the troops Megatron had assigned him had been safely set into the “unnecessary” category. 

There it was.  _ Nyon.  _ Deadlock had seen reports of what had happened, of course; the destruction of the city had been one of the driving factors behind what set the war  _ really _ going. It had happened not too soon after Declaration Day, which gave him a set date in his mind.

_ Damn.  _ He really  _ hadn’t  _ opened any of these files in millions of years. Maybe that was why there was something nagging him about how familiar the situation had seemed, watching it on the monitor. 

If he wasn’t going to sleep, he might as well see what all he’d forgotten in four million years.

He opened the file folder. Almost immediately, the memories came flooding back through the front of his mind, finding their places inside of pathways they hadn’t traveled for millions of years. Deadlock shivered and blinked for a moment, letting them settle into place.

_ All right.  _

Nyon had been the focal point of heavy recruitment efforts just before the beginning of the war, Deadlock discovered. The colloquially-named City of Flame was much like the Dead End had been-- filled with hungry, desperate people who were more than willing to aid the cause of a revolution. But there was something else, something that Deadlock and other members of high command had been assigned to at that time. 

Deadlock frowned, and dug a little deeper.

Megatron had assigned a special mission to Deadlock, Starscream and his trine, Soundwave’s more reliable cassettes, and a few select others; something the other recruiters had never been able to achieve. Nyon was rich with potential Decepticons, but there was one mech Megatron had made it clear was to be recruited above all others.

_ “I can make do without each and every one of the Nyonian recruits, but I need  _ him,” Megatron had told them.  _ “He has the potential to be an asset of incredible value. Recruit him, and our campaign in Nyon will be a success.” _

Deadlock remembered it as clear as if it had been yesterday: The way Megatron had leaned forward against the holo-table; the way Deadlock had worked to keep Ravage halfway in his sight as the beastformer paced around the back of the room; the way Starscream’s wings had flicked with something vaguely unpleasant as he stared up at the hologram of the mech Megatron had wanted. The hologram of. . .  _ of. . . _

Deadlock scrambled upright, tearing himself out of the memory in shock.  _ Hot Rod.  _ Megatron had wanted  _ Hot Rod.  _ As in: The mech lying four feet away from him, sleeping off a broken leg strut that he’d gotten from being tortured on the order of one of Megatron’s Decepticons.

_ There’s no way.  _

Deadlock revisited the file. There he was again, as plain as day on the hologram, caught mid-shout with his arm reared back to throw something, his teeth bared and his eyes burning with fury. It was Hot Rod. Completely, undeniably,  _ definitively _ Hot Rod. 

Deadlock slumped back against the berth, stunned. In all the time Hot Rod had been on board the ship, he hadn’t remembered this. He hadn’t. . .

Hot Rod had shown enough promise as a potential Decepticon that Megatron had targeted him  _ specifically  _ in the beginning of the war. Hot Rod had been a freedom fighter in his own little town that Deadlock knew now to be  _ achingly  _ similar to his own of the Dead End. Hot Rod had been forced to make a horrible decision, killing off his own people to spare them a suffering death, and he’d carried that with him for four million years, and Deadlock had thought--  _ somehow,  _ he’d thought that Hot Rod was just some Autobot grunt?

Hot Rod was as much a Decepticon as Deadlock. 

It struck Deadlock then; his immediate classification of Hot Rod as worthy of the Decepticon cause contrasted with the certainty he’d always had that Turmoil was hardly a true Decepticon. If Megatron knew what was happening here, to the mech that he’d wanted so badly to recruit to the Cause, would he care? Would he stop it?

If Megatron knew what was happening to Deadlock here, would he stop it?

But-- no. None of that. Not now, and not-- not ever. None of it.

Deadlock removed the file from the forefront of his mind and set it as far back as he could with the residual memory still circling around in his processor. He was going to sleep now if it killed him. 

Deadlock ignored the increasingly worried warnings on his screen as he disconnected each of his higher brain functions and physically forced his processor to fall headfirst into a hard reset, sending him offline with a sharp fizzle and a flash of pain.

  
  
  


“So. . .” Broadwire said cautiously, as they circled each other in the training room, “you, uh. . . okay for this?”

Hot Rod suppressed the surge of annoyance the words caused. “Yeah. It’s been like, three days. Of  _ course _ that’s enough time for a snapped leg strut to heal.”

He was lucky Broadwire didn’t pick up on sarcasm much.

“I don’t--” Broadwire cast a glance over at the other side of the training room, at Deadlock. He didn’t seem to be paying them much attention. “Don’t want him on my case if I break you, y’know?”

“As if you’d be able to,” Hot Rod threw back, with more confidence than he felt.

Broadwire  _ finally  _ focused on him. “Uh,  _ what?  _ You’re  _ limping,  _ Autobot.”

“Yeah, and you’re--” Hot Rod said, and threw himself at Broadwire.

Broadwire yelped in surprise as he fell backward-- he  _ really  _ needed to be watching out for that move, Hot Rod had done it to him like three times now-- and hit the ground hard. 

They fought for a bit on the ground, the close quarters not really lending themselves to a really fair fight. It was mostly undignified scuffling and thrashing and occasional indignant outbursts as they tried to gain the upper hand on each other.

“Okay,  _ get  _ off,” Broadwire grunted eventually, and pushed away. “What’s up with you today, huh?”

Hot Rod let himself fall back against the floor of the training room. “What do you mean?” he asked tiredly. 

“Well. . . I dunno.” Broadwire glanced at him sideways. “You’re really. . .  _ mad?” _

“I’m just fighting with you.” Hot Rod stared up at the ceiling. “We do this pretty much all the time.”

“Yeah, but you’re different today.” Broadwire poked his leg, and Hot Rod hissed and pulled away. “Are you angry because Turmoil--”

_ “No,”  _ Hot Rod sneered. “No. Of course not.”

Broadwire picked up on  _ that  _ bit of sarcasm. “Well. . . maybe don’t take it out on me, then. I don’t know.”

“Sure. Sorry.”

“Why don’t you get Deadlock to take you back to your hab? If your leg is still hurting?”

“It’s not. Hurting, I mean. I’m okay.”

“Look, Autobot, I’m sorry but I want to  _ train  _ when I come here, not sit on the ground and have a heart-to-heart. So either you’re okay, and you’re gonna spar like normal, or you’re not, and I’m gonna go do something else.” Broadwire spread his hands helplessly. “Or you find someone who wants to wrestle.”

Hot Rod sighed. He turned his head to look at Deadlock across the training room, still at the gun targets. Hot Rod knew the training room well enough by now to recognize the row of force-field shafts that made up the shooting range; Deadlock had taken up the one at the far end, so as to keep an eye on Hot Rod. He had what looked like a sniper rifle, his face pressed to the sight and his arms tight. He stood with his legs in a firm stance, and the kickback of the rifle made his shoulders jerk back only slightly. 

“Hot Rod?”

“Yeah.” Hot Rod blinked as he sat up and turned back to Broadwire. “No, yeah, you’re right. I’ll go back to the hab. Probably shouldn’t be fighting on this leg.”

“Okay.” Broadwire looked a bit sorry, but maybe that was just Hot Rod’s imagination. “See ya, I guess.”

Hot Rod wondered, as Broadwire wandered off, if Deadlock had been watching them fight at all. Probably not, but if he had, would he have stopped Broadwire from “breaking” Hot Rod, like Broadwire had been worried about? 

Hot Rod remembered the first time he’d snuck out, the way Deadlock had lifted him off of Broadwire like he weighed nothing. He remembered the way Deadlock’s hands had felt against his chest, the way he’d grabbed his collar faring and pulled him closer, the way their eyes had met. 

Deadlock hadn’t so much as looked Hot Rod straight in the face since Turmoil had taken him. 

Well. Enough of  _ that.  _

Hot Rod made his way over to Deadlock-- Broadwire had been right, he realized ruefully, he  _ was  _ still limping-- and buzzed at the entrance to the target shaft his bodyguard had taken residence in. 

Deadlock turned to look, and set the rifle on one of the cases on the force-field wall. He made his way toward the door at the end and removed the brick he’d set there to keep it open. 

_ Right. He has to ping Turmoil for permission to open the doors.  _ Hot Rod stepped back as Deadlock pushed the two halves of it apart and looked down at him.

“You alright?” 

“Broadwire took offense at my unorthodox style of fighting called ‘I don’t want to bounce up and down on this broken leg for two hours,’ so he dipped,” Hot Rod said, folding his arms. “I guess we should go back to the hab.”

“Mmm.” Hot Rod could feel how Deadlock’s engine was humming, at this close proximity. 

“Mmm?” he repeated, flicking his spoiler.

Deadlock looked up at the ceiling. He sighed. “Come in here.”

“What?”

“Come. In here. Come on.” 

Hot Rod stepped inside the shaft. “What, so I can watch you shoot guns for another hour?”

“No.” Deadlock put a hand on his upper back and guided him toward the targets at the back. “I’m gonna give you that shooting lesson.”

“Didn’t realize Turmoil fucked up my audial receptors, too.” Hot Rod turned to face Deadlock, staring at him. “You’re gonna  _ what?” _

Deadlock, true to what Hot Rod had put together, still refused to look him in the eyes. “I’m giving you the shooting lesson you wanted. Turn around.”

“You  _ do  _ realize that means I could. I dunno. Shoot you and run away?”

“Yeah.” Deadlock reached into his subspace pocket with one hand.

_ “And?”  _ Hot Rod stared at him in disbelief.

“And I know you won’t.” Deadlock pulled out one of his guns and reached for Hot Rod’s hand. He took it, pulled it open, and placed the gun into his palm. 

“Sweet sentiment to expect that kinda nobility from your prisoner.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Deadlock patted the gun in Hot Rod’s hand. “I’ve still got one.”

His field was unreadable; Hot Rod stared at him a moment longer before shrugging and turning back to the target as requested.

“Show me how you’re gonna hold it,” Deadlock told him. “First things first.”

“Uh. . .” Hot Rod said. “With both hands?”

“I’m not teaching you how to shoot with both hands,” Deadlock said. “You already know that. I’ve seen Autobots shoot. They train you to do that because it’s got the best chance at accuracy and it’s easy to learn. Am I right?”

“Sure.”

“If I asked you to shoot with one hand, though, you’d miss that target by a mile.”

Hot Rod laughed. “I’m not  _ that  _ bad a shot.”

“Did you ever train for one-handed shooting?” Deadlock stepped around to stand next to him. “You wouldn’t be prepared for the recoil. Your shot would go high.”

“Alright, fine. What should I do to fix that, then?” Hot Rod held out his hand with the gun in it. “Aim low?”

Deadlock’s vents chuffed briefly. “No. Here. Hold it with both hands, like you normally would.” He lifted Hot Rod’s other hand and put it on the gun. “Hold it out in front of you and aim.”

“Okay.” Hot Rod did so, glancing back at Deadlock. 

“Now just take one of your hands down. Put it at your side.” Deadlock didn’t guide his hand down this time, and Hot Rod felt surprised and then, impossibly, disappointed. “You’ll want to lock your wrist joints.”

“And my elbows too?”

“No. You need that to absorb the recoil.”

Hot Rod sent the command to lock up his wrist joints. He couldn’t help feeling a momentary sense of panic, remembering Manibus’ remote-control code; with an effort, he pushed the feeling to the side.

“Go ahead and shoot,” Deadlock said. He leaned against the force-field wall, keeping an eye on Hot Rod’s outstretched arm.

Hot Rod squeezed the gun in his hand, squinted down the sight, and pulled the trigger.

When he put the gun down, he was pleased to see a glowing mark near the inner two rings of the target. He turned back to Deadlock, grinning.

Deadlock smirked, pushing himself off the wall. “Now, we’re gonna go through this until you get it in the center every time.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Y’know, it’s a thing we hear about you,” Hot Rod said after the first hour and a half, when his arm and hand were aching and his vision had long gone blurry. “You and your shooting. How accurate it is, I mean. One-shot kills and all that.”

“I thought the most infamous thing about me was the  _ very  _ few and far-between times I ended up killing Autobots with my teeth,” Deadlock said, sounding surprisingly neutral. He took the gun from Hot Rod and set it inside his subspace, holding his hand out for Hot Rod to put his own into. Hot Rod cautiously held it out and Deadlock took it, settling it between his cupped hands and gently rubbing the aching palm-plates with his thumbs. Hot Rod melted, his spoiler fluttering.

“I mean. . . well, yeah,” he managed. “That was kind of a big deal. But like you said, y’know, you don’t do that a  _ lot.  _ Like it’s not your  _ thing.” _

“It’s not,” Deadlock agreed.

“We still hear stories about you, though. You were--” Hot Rod hesitated before saying  _ Decepticon High Command  _ and ended up with “--really good. Scary. You know.”

Deadlock didn’t answer. His thumbs left Hot Rod’s palm and he began pulling each of Hot Rod’s digits just enough to ease the joints of their gathered tension. 

“Anyway, it’s not like you’re the only Decepticon out there that can shoot. Don’t get cocky or anything.” Hot Rod rolled his neck and eyed the practice target; he  _ had  _ ended up getting mostly in the middle, after a while. No matter what Deadlock was, he wasn’t an awful teacher.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“So. . .” Hot Rod said, because he  _ had  _ to ask at some point, and right now seemed ideal, “what’s the deal with suddenly being cool with shooting lessons?”

“Hm?”

“You were all like--” Hot Rod put on an exaggerated scowl, “-- _ Hot Rod, you know you’re not getting a shooting lesson,  _ and you just. . . changed your mind? Was it my dazzling personality?”

Deadlock dropped his hand. “I just changed my mind.”

“Hey.” Hot Rod poked him in the abdomen. “Come on, what’s it really about?”

“Don’t push it,” Deadlock told him.

“What, I can’t ask a simple question?”

“Mmh. No.”

Hot Rod put his hands on his hips and stared up at Deadlock, who was doing an excellent impersonation of a person who didn’t want to look at Hot Rod. “You’re not giving me a lot to work with here.”

“Can you just leave it alone?” Deadlock turned around and began unloading the sniper rifle from the wall, his field beginning to betray hints of annoyance. Hot Rod wasn’t gonna get much from him for the next couple of hours, looked like. Pushing Deadlock would either result in what you wanted or get you a sullen, silent bodyguard, and Hot Rod never really knew how to consistently get the former.

He decided to go for it anyway. “I’m just asking! You’ve been surprisingly decent for the last hour and a half, and I’d just like to know if theres a  _ reason _ or if you visited some kind of, I don’t know, onboard relinquishment clinic and you’ve been replaced with a much nicer person who’s decided to take your body for a spin--”

Deadlock snapped the rifle case shut with a sharp, sudden movement, his back going angrily stiff.

“. . . Or something,” Hot Rod finished lamely.

Deadlock turned around.

“I’m sorry! Whatever.” Hot Rod held his hands up in surrender, rolling his eyes. “Keep your secrets.”

There was a long pause. Deadlock looked away, at the target, his hands clenched at his sides; Hot Rod felt his spoiler press against the force-field as he stepped backwards unconsciously.

“Fine,” Deadlock said, and turned to look him in the eyes.

Hot Rod tilted his head. “Fine. . . what?”

“I--” Deadlock said, and growled in frustration. “Listen, I don’t-- I don’t approve of what Turmoil’s doing to you.”

Hot Rod’s spark stilled. A sudden, rushing feeling started to rise in him; it was unfamiliar, but he recognized it instinctively after a moment.  _ Hope. _

“You don’t?” he said cautiously.

“It’s not-- it’s not how the Decepticons should operate,” Deadlock said. “Torture is distasteful and  _ useless.  _ If you have no information to give, you should be in the brig.”

“Oh, thanks a lot,” Hot Rod said, automatically, but his mind was elsewhere. This was-- this was  _ huge.  _ This was  _ good.  _ Way ahead of schedule, but maybe--  _ maybe  _ Deadlock was. . . was. . .?

“Will you help me escape?” he asked, his voice hushing and his eyes brightening, stepping forward towards Deadlock eagerly. “Will you help me get away?”

Deadlock stepped back, alarmed, bumping against the wall as Hot Rod approached. “Wait-- that’s not what I-- how do you think--  _ No!”  _ His plating bristled. “I  _ can’t!  _ I mean, I-- I mean I wouldn’t. I’m not a _ traitor.” _

“You just said that it’s not how the Decepticons should operate,” Hot Rod pointed out bitterly, the sudden disappointment heavy in every line of his frame.

“It’s not up to me to. . . It’s not up to me to judge how the Decepticons--” Deadlock broke off and grabbed his finials in frustration. “Is  _ this  _ a good enough explanation for you? Do you know what the DJD is?”

“Yeah,” Hot Rod muttered.

“If I help you-- if I help you  _ escape,”  _ Deadlock hissed, “you know where my name is going?”

“On the--”

_ “Right _ on the bottom of that pretty lil’ list, and let me tell you Tarn has been  _ aching  _ to see it on there for three million years at the  _ least.”  _

“What do you think has been happening to me for the past--” Hot Rod reached out and clenched his hands in the air.  _ “Please,  _ I-- I can’t take this for much longer, Deadlock, I really can’t, I--”

“That is  _ not  _ my problem,” Deadlock snarled, but his eyes looked unsure and his field reeked of doubt.

“You weren’t there when they patched me up, were you? After he broke my leg?” Hot Rod stepped closer, pointing a finger at Deadlock. “Do you wanna know what they said? Actinus said that if my self-repair systems got another big shock like that within a month, they’d just shut down altogether. Without someone who knows how to get them back on-- someone like Ratchet-- I’m gonna  _ die.”  _ He dropped his hand, wrapping both of them around himself. “And Manibus has Nyon now, and-- he’ll just keep taking whatever he wants, because the files aren’t  _ protected  _ anymore, I-- I keep trying to build the firewalls back up but they’re gone, they’re fucking  _ shattered--” _ He backed up and let himself fall to the ground against the force-field wall, pulling his knees closer to himself. “And I’m going to die if Turmoil gets me again. Which he will. Because I’m  _ stuck here _ on this fucking ship and  _ no one cares where I am--” _

“Hot Rod--”

“Don’t.” Hot Rod waved him off. “Just let me have this for a second, all right? I deserve one breakdown before I die.”

Deadlock was silent for a long moment, his hands clenching and unclenching in Hot Rod’s vision. Then, “Fine,” he growled, and turned away to begin packing up the rest of the guns. “We’re going back to the hab in five.”

Hot Rod nodded blearily, and rested his head on his arms, trying to collect himself. Five minutes. Yeah. That was doable.

After that, he could go back to pretending everything was fine. At least for however long he had left, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ARE YOU READY FOR IT TO START PICKING UP LADS I PROMISE ITS GONNA HAPPEN NEXT CHAPTER

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr at outlier-roddy! i'll post updates there so gimme a follow and we can yell abt the gay robots :3


End file.
